Women Helping Women - ADB Review

Women Helping Women
ADB Review [ January - February 2004 ]

Day care centers for children are empowering women by giving them the time to work and earn incomes

By Marcia R. Samson
Senior Editorial Officer

Background

Benefits for Children-and Families

Background

CEBU ISLAND, PHILIPPINES

LOVING TEACHER Auntie Daya, a day care worker, teaches about 70 children daily in the coastal municipality of Catmon, Cebu

Rosalinda Linsing, known to children as Auntie Daya, is a day care worker in the northern coastal municipality ofCatmon. Each day, through games, songs, dances, and storytelling, she teaches 70 children aged 3–6 years about proper nutrition, toilet training, hygiene, and good habits. With these activities, Ms. Linsing not only helps prepare children for formal schooling but also paves the way for mothers to be released from full-time child care.

And she is not alone.

Hundreds of other women—child development workers, day care mothers, day care workers, rural health midwives, and grade 1 teachers—have been organized in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) pilot project to provide much-needed health, education, and psychosocial development services. The aims are to improve early development of children from poor families and simultaneously provide the parents—particularly mothers—with the opportunity to earn incomes and help improve their family’s livelihoods.

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Benefits for Children-and Families

Across Cebu, several other day care centers have been upgraded, refurbished, and equipped with educational toys and reading materials for children—thanks to the Philippines’ Early Childhood Development Project, which started in 1998. Two loans totaling $24.5 million ($8.8 million from the concessional Asian Development Fund and $15.7 million from ordinary capital resources) comprised 38% of the total project cost, with the balance of $40.5 million provided by World Bank, local government units, and the Government.

“While the benefits of these services seem micro, the project has a big return on investment. Its benefits are lifetime and intergenerational,” says Social Welfare and Development Undersecretary Celia Yangco, who is the project’s director.

Twenty-six-year old Yvonne Rule can attest to these benefits. “An early education may be the only treasure I can give my two children,” she says.

HELPING HAND Edwina Joring, a child development worker, supervises a regular neighborhood play session, giving parents the opportunity to work.

The project is innovative because it is aimed at integrating education, health, and psychosocial activities for the holistic development of a child in the formative first 6 years of life. The project covers 13 provinces and 169 municipalities, accounting for about half of the country’s as-risk children. As of 2002, the project had benefited 1.8 million children. When completed in 2004, the project will be targeting 2.7 million children per year.

Susanne Wendt, ADB Social Development Specialist (Gender and Development), says the project is helping attain the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the under-five child mortality rate, as well as decreasing low birth weight, lowering malnutrition, and increasing the proportion of fully immunized children. The project is also helping improve school readiness and psychosocial ability of school entrants, and reduce the grade 1 dropout rate, she adds.

Parent effectiveness services are particularly changing the traditional role of women as sole caregivers in the family (see box). Mothers—and fathers—are being trained on parenting to increase their awareness of the joint responsibility of raising children.

In providing these diverse, integrated services, women and men are taking key roles in caring for children, and women are empowered by allowing them the time and space for them to work.

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