Working mums in Asia receive childcare help

Many mothers know the pressures of juggling home and working life, but for women in Asia with little access to formal childcare the problem can be acute.

Without access to childcare, many working mothers from developing communities in Asia are forced to leave their children unattended.

As Asian economies grow and more women, particularly from rural areas, enter the workforce, formal childcare has been mostly overlooked by their governments.

For working mothers who do not have older relatives to help with childcare, they must either leave their children at home alone or in the care of an older sibling, which creates neglect issues for both children - the younger child misses out on safe care and appropriate learning activities while the older child, who has been taken out of school, misses out on education.

What Plan does

In East Timor for example, a pilot project running in Alieu district provided more than 1,000 children under six with home and community-based care.

ECCD Advisor Lorna Bacolong said; “The programme ran with minimal funding and was a success because it was owned and managed by parents. Mothers volunteered to be carers and payment for childcare was based on a mother’s capacity to pay – this could be in kind, for example vegetables and rice, or in exchange for working as a carer, cooking or cleaning.”

In Bangladesh, Plan is running its ECCD programmes in 200 rural villages, catering for more than 25,000 children. In the slums around Dhaka, staff also set up much needed childcare centres for children of working mothers who have moved to the city for work.

Across the border in India, local organisation and Plan partner Mobile Crèches face a monumental task - more than 20 million children are left to look after themselves at dangerous construction sites, while nearby their mothers haul bricks for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week.

Mobile Crèches currently runs 65 day care centres in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune at construction sites and slums. Each mobile crèche has eight to nine carers, who look after from 150 to 170 young children.

In 2007, Plan launched the programme in China. As well as offering mothers childcare, the programmes will ensure that children receive nutritious meals and enjoy play that stimulates their learning and prepares them for their first year of school.