Freetown: Caring city

 

Unpaid caregiving is a major impediment to gender equity in Sierra Leone, where women and girls carry disproportionate burdens for their households. Time devoted to care responsibilities prevents them from finding time for their own education, wellbeing, and labour market advancement, and often exposes them to sexual violence.  This project will transplant and scale the innovative Care Blocks system implemented by the municipality of Bogotá in Colombia to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, empowering caregivers and the people they care for.  

This program will be anchored in Susan’s Bay, an informal settlement in Freetown, where care services are already being offered and can be expanded. It will bring together existing programs for adult education, nutrition, day care and professional development, as well as access to health services including support for gender-based violence, to a central, existing anchor building. It will also offer training for men to learn care work and spearhead a public advocacy campaign on the value of care. By bringing Care Blocks to Freetown, the project will create an adapted model for other African municipal leaders to borrow across the region and continent.   

This project is supported under the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa partnership co-funded by Global Affairs Canada and IDRC. Scaling Care Innovations is a five-year partnership aimed at scaling tested and locally grounded policy and program innovations to redress gender inequalities in unpaid care work in Sub-Saharan Africa.