This is a round-up of activities and consequent outcomes of the WE-Care Project in the last quarter. This project is implemented in conjunction with Oxfam Kenya.
The project seeks to increase recognition of Unpaid Care and Domestic Work (UCDW) in public policy; reduce heavy and time-consuming UCDW through investments in essential public services and infrastructure; redistribute the responsibility for UCDW more equally between men and women, and between households and the state, and ensure that women with care responsibilities are represented in the planning and implementation of budgets and policies that affect their lives, and reward UCDW through value and economic recognition.
A WIN FOR THE NAIROBI CITY COUNTY COMMUNITY HEALTH VOLUNTEERS (CHVs)
Our online petition #InuaMamaZetu, was followed up by the submission of a memo by the Community Health Volunteers on the County Fiscal Strategy Paper/FY/2022/2023. This was after acquiring knowledge from our activities about the Nairobi City County Health Services Act, 2019, the county budgeting cycle and public participation.
Nairobi CHVs now have a reason to smile as, for the first time there is a budget line (zero budget) that will provide stipends to 7,320 CHVs at an estimated cost of Kshs 350 million in the next financial year.
Read more here.
NEW PARTNERSHIP
We entered into a partnership with AWAK (Association of women in Agriculture Kenya) in a phase 2 project dubbed ‘Resilient recovery for vulnerable mothers living in urban informal settlement areas’. The project is targeting 760 women in Nairobi’s informal settlements (Kawangware, Korogocho, and Kibra).
It seeks to empower women with urban farming and food processing techniques suited for their very small urban spaces. The crops will not only be for subsistence use but also for commercial use translating to income for the women.
CROSS-LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Between January and March, we took part in learning opportunities locally, regionally, and globally. These opportunities provided a platform to broach women empowerment from an unpaid care perspective.
We were part of the NGO CSW FORUM 66- Parallel Event dubbed ‘Where is the money for care?’. We considered the question: What supportive role could donors play, and how could they coordinate to better support national and regional actors, and work with governments, to address women’s unpaid care work, and what policies are urgently needed for care work?
The event attracted 88 participants. World Economic Forum, Care International, the Mastercard Foundation, the Cherie Blair Foundation, and Global Tax Justice were among the organizations that attended.
Publish What You Fund, the organizer of the event, used our recently launched Care policy scorecard to base the discussions.
Please find the full event recording here.
She also spoke on ‘ Youth as Social Accountability Champions’ during the Africa –Europe week by the AU-EU Youth cooperation hub. In this session, she explained how social norms if not addressed would continue to prevent young women from taking active roles in good governance processes.
Youth Alive! Kenya represented by Purity Jebor, a Programme Officer, discussed the question “ Is there a place for young women and girls in the Women Economic Empowerment Agenda?”. She shed light on how we use the unpaid care concept to advocate for care responsive development and women empowerment.
This was at a workshop convened by the East African Community (EAC) – Gender department in partnership with Collaboration Center for Gender Development. It was themed ‘Initiatives supporting Women Economic and Gender integration’. All Kenya ministries and EAC were in attendance.
Purity also spoke at the Youth Dialogue on the International Women’s Day (IWD), 2022 convened by the East African Community
As a hybrid event, it attracted participants from Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Sudan. In attendance were the EAC- Gender principal and Members of the EAC. As a speaker, Youth Alive shared the representation of marginalized women in decision-making spaces.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY (IWD) CELEBRATIONS
In this year’s IWD celebrations, we used partnerships as a strategic approach to upscale the conversation on care.
On March 3, we joined Nairobi City County and other partners in reaching out to 120 women political aspirants to discuss gender, violence, and politics.
On March 4th – 5th, 2022, together with Plan International, World Vision, USAID, African Youth network and Clivios organization and the youth affairs department of Nairobi City County, held a conference in recognition of the important roles young women play in the community.
120 young women aged between 22 and 24 years within the 17 sub-counties of Nairobi were in attendance. We discussed peace in the context of the 2022 general elections.
On March 7th, 2022 we convened with grassroots women leaders from Korogocho, Lucky summer, Mathare, Kiambu, Dagoretti north and south convened in Kawangware to celebrate the IWD. The leaders led discussions on grassroots mobilization for information sharing, policy advocacy, Gender mainstreaming at the grassroots, women in leadership, and inclusion in electoral processes.
IWD COMMUNITY RADIO OUTREACHES
We participated in 2 community-based radio outreaches through Koch FM and Mtaani radio. This was an effort to localize the discussion on gender equity, the intentional reduction of unpaid care work that women engage in.
Male care champions were also engaged in the sessions as care champions to share and encourage their fellow men to take part in providing care and being advocates of care development. This is a symbol of a new men generation who support women’s empowerment in simple ways.
POLICY AND BUDGET ADVOCACY
What is the place of youth in budgeting advocacy?
We held a successful awareness session about the County Fiscal Strategy Paper (CSFP) with women and youth from Kiambu county.
Through this awareness session, the participants realized that the County was late in sharing the CFSP and public participation schedule to enable the community to make meaningful contributions to the document. The participants quickly drafted and filed a complaint letter to the Clerk – Kiambu County Assembly with two requests;1) To publish and share the draft of the CFSP: and, 2) To publish and share the public participation schedule.
As a result of this, the County published the document as per the request made. As a follow-up, the youth mobilized the community and developed a memo for the formulation of the CFSP/FY/2022/2023. Among the key requests from the women and youth to be included in the CFSP were water, health and education. Find more information here.
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