📋 Tender Overview
PROJECT ID
111019
TOTAL FUNDING
CAD 208,500.00
PROJECT STATUS
Active
DURATION
15 months
Summary
Through IDRC's Scaling Care Innovations in Africa program, two complementary initiatives have demonstrated the potential of municipal and market-based approaches to address women's unpaid care in African cities. In Nairobi, a project led by childcare social enterprise Wow Mom, in partnership with the Nairobi City County Government (NCCG), successfully scaled up market-based childcare solutions. They demonstrated that women's care responsibilities extend far beyond childcare to include eldercare, support for persons with disabilities and care for relatives with chronic illnesses.
In Freetown, Sierra Leone, the City Hub for Gender Equality (CHANGE) has helped the Freetown City Council to adapt Bogotá's Care Block model, which co-locates proximate, flexible and simultaneous services for caregivers with the intention of reducing unpaid care workloads. Together, these initiatives have generated evidence, established partnerships, and developed implementation tools. They have also created new opportunities for African municipalities to design integrated care systems that recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.
This project brings together WowMom and CHANGE to deepen the Nairobi County Government’s plans to pilot a Care Block in Nairobi. Wow Mom, NCCG and CHANGE will co-design a Care Block roadmap in the neighbourhood of Ziwani, with a focus on outlining steps, stakeholders, spatial opportunities and service options that could reduce caregivers' time. The roadmap will guide NCCG toward creating its first Care Block and scaling up citywide application in future. While the project will not attempt to build a Care Block at this stage, it will produce the community-led, evidence-based roadmap that is needed for later implementation.
The project is supported under the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa partnership co-funded by Global Affairs Canada and the International Development Research Centre. Scaling Care Innovations is a five-year partnership aimed at scaling tested and locally grounded policy and program innovations, as a means of addressing gender inequalities in unpaid care work throughout sub-Saharan Africa. This project is funded through the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa Strategic Scaling Grant.
