Advocating for Informal Worker Child Care Rights: The Case of Argentina
One of the Children’s Leisure and Learning Centres, where waste pickers’ children are cared for while their parents work. Photo courtesy of MTE-UTEP.
By Tracy Koske
July 24, 2024 – In the heart of Argentina’s bustling informal economy, a remarkable organization is making waves by transforming the lives of informal workers and empowering communities. The Movimiento de Trabajadores Excluidos (MTE), also known as the Excluded Workers Movement, is dedicated to advocating for the rights and well-being of informal workers, ranging from waste pickers to street vendors. Let’s take a closer look at how the informal workers developed a solution that continues to respond to the needs of workers in the informal economy and their families.
Supporting Care through the Social and Solidarity Economy
In the early 2000s, waste pickers faced very unfavorable working conditions. Many had to bring their children along because there was no safe place to leave them, including women waste pickers who had to stay with their children till odd hours from 5 pm until midnight. MTE, lacking experience in child care, collaborated directly with informal workers to develop a solution: the Children’s Leisure and Learning Centres (CIRA). Launched in 2009, these first-of-their-kind childcare facilities offer free and safe care for waste pickers’ children. This not only provided peace of mind for parents but also yielded significant benefits. Over 870 families now benefit from nurturing care, which reduces child labor and enables women to extend their working hours, thereby fostering gender equality.
Comprehensive Childhood Training Booklets
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated economic challenges and hardships, with a rise in domestic violence and child abuse. MTE-UTEP, recognizing the need for additional support, proactively reached out to the CIRAs to receive suggestions from their caregivers and educators on issues faced by the children. Their valuable insights served as the foundation for comprehensive training booklets on play, social and emotional development, language development and communication, psychomotor development, nutrition, routines and boundaries, and comprehensive sexuality education, all of which have become essential tools for caregivers and educators.
Development and Distribution of the Booklets
Created by a team of experts, the booklets ensured practical and accessible content.The technical teams and coordinators trained the caregivers and educators on these booklets, which were then distributed to the 15 CIRAs. The other social community centers, which served the informal workers, also received the booklets virtually. Over time, the team continuously improved the booklets based on caregiver and educator feedback to align with the socio-cultural needs of each community.
To ensure practical usage of these booklets, the MTE-UTEP staff continue to conduct a monthly check-in with each CIRA through the planning assembly, during which they listen to the caregiver’s feedback. Many caregivers now refer to the booklets regularly while caring for the children, finding them invaluable for in-depth caregiving knowledge and capacity building. By equipping caregivers and educators with comprehensive resources, the initiative aims to foster holistic care for children within CIRAs, emphasizing education’s role in preventing child abuse. They held feedback forums during the distribution, but gathering feedback from different communities during the activities proved difficult due to limited team resources. With only three team members serving the 15 CIRAs, it became costly to keep up with monthly planning assemblies. However, improved planning and systematized feedback recording are now in place.
Today, MTE-UTEP operates 15 CIRA across four provinces in Argentina: Corrientes, Cordoba, Chubut, and Buenos Aires, serving over 870 families in the popular economy. The centers’ holistic approach, tailored to parents’ working hours, addresses their unique care, leisure, and learning needs. Each CIRA’s design and management prioritize specific work sectors, influencing opening hours, health protocols, and children’s needs.
Studies consistently demonstrate cooperatives’ effectiveness in addressing socio-economic needs. Worker-run cooperatives in the informal economy are crucial for meeting the care needs of women workers and safeguarding the labor rights of care workers within the informal sector. Prioritizing sustainability, equity, and shared prosperity, these cooperatives are well-suited for childcare, often leading to resilient and responsive organizations that better serve members and the broader community.
The pandemic highlighted the remarkable adaptability of worker-run care spaces such as CIRA in designing and implementing community-based interventions. These spaces play a role in meeting evolving community needs through solid collaboration and innovative solutions.
MTE-UTEP’s Crucial Work Faces Financial Threat
Despite their success in supporting children and families, MTE-UTEP faces significant financial challenges that threaten the sustainability of their essential work. The organization heavily depends on government programs for its operations, such as the Empower Work program, which aims to increase the income of individuals experiencing social and economic vulnerability, and Nexus, which provides financial support for social-community work. These programs were crucial for MTE-UTEP, enabling them to keep social spaces open for longer hours and offer expanded support to children and vulnerable populations in underserved neighborhoods.
Loss of Funding Creates Gaps in Service
Unfortunately, the new government has eliminated both the Empower Work program and “nexus” programs. Only half of the CIRAs receive regular state funding, leaving many without reliable financial support. This lack of support has led caregivers to seek better-paying opportunities, leaving gaps in childcare services. Existing early childhood programs fail to address the unique needs of informal workers, further limiting service availability.
MTE-UTEP Adapts and Advocates
To address financial shortfalls, MTE-UTEP has narrowed its focus and, due to the food crisis, now prioritizes providing lunch for children at the centres. They are actively negotiating with the current government and initiating a fundraising campaign to secure international funding for the CIRAs programs, soup kitchens, and children’s food provision.
Support MTE-UTEP in Creating a Brighter Future for Children
To fully realize children’s rights and provide them with spaces for leisure and learning, MTE-UTEP aims to implement several key initiatives to create a more equitable and supportive environment for their children, ensuring that every child thrives. To support MTE-UTEP’s initiatives, you can reach out to tracy.koske@wiego.org and learn how you may contribute to the fundraising campaign.
References
A synthesis of research findings on women informal workers and child care from six membership-based organizations. WIEGO Child Care Initiative (Durban, WIEGO). Available at: http://www.wiego.org/publications/our-children-do-not-get-attention-they-deserve
ILO and WIEGO “Statistical update on employment in the informal economy.” Available at: http://laborsta.ilo.org/applv8/data/INFORMAL_ECONOMY/2012-06-Statistical%20update%20-%20v2.pdf
Providing care through Cooperatives 1: Survey and interview findings (Geneva). Available at: http://www.ilo.org/empent/units/cooperatives/WCMS_457286/lang–en/index.htm
MTE and UTEP, MTE: Popular economy workers’ child-care facilities offer critical services during COVID-19 in Argentina, June 2022. Available at https://www.wiego.org/resources/mte-popular-economy-workers-child-care-facilities-offer-critical-services-during-covid-19
1 Since December 2023, the 2600 community spaces (registered in the ReNaCom-National Registry of Community Dining Rooms and Picnic Areas) stopped receiving all kinds of products or money to meet the demand for food. The National Secretariat for Children, Adolescents and Family, under the Ministry of Human Capital, did not execute the items of the food programs for soup kitchens that by law had been renewed emulating the 2023 budget, programs with financing from the Inter-American Development Bank (for the purchase of dry and fresh food (“Argentine National Plan against Hunger”) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).