At its most basic, the economic contribution of women in low income households is vital for the survival of everyone in that household, but especially when they are the very caregivers of children with disabilities, whose education and health-care are significantly expensive.

It is a fact that the economic vulnerability of a family due to the presence of a person with disability couples with lack of adequate and accessible public services, even in response of basic needs. This probably develops from inadequate consideration of the issue of disability when allocating public resources.

Moreover, women’s care work for children with disability is often not perceived as work, particularly where it is performed unremunerated. Unpaid female caregivers at all ages forego paid work, education or training and therefore opportunities for an adequate or better standard of living, as well as civic or political activities and leisure time, to provide care, which is often unrecognized and dismissed as “women’s work.”

Indeed, women shoulder a disproportionately burden of unpaid care for their children with disabilities.

To respond to this crisis, in 2021-2022 Watoto Ciao launched a programme focused on caregivers’ financial empowerment, through provision of small income generating activities.

A local assessment had established that some of the key constraints to female entrepreneurship include the followings:

• lack of skills and knowledge,
• limited control over economic resources and earnings,
• lower productivity in sectors that women typically engage in
• lack of access to credit and financial services.

Watoto Ciao is currently strengthening women’s ability to build financially sustainable, profitable and growing informal businesses, with the potential to enter the formal economy, by targeting the specific vulnerabilities women face.

Our work centers around three main goals:

1. Provide a package of training in life skills, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship and mentorship activities.
2. Building inclusive and competitive small businesses that generate income opportunities for women
3. Address social stigma

To date, the project has supported 20 CWDs’ caregivers who received training sessions on bookkeeping and technical knowledge on soap making, chicken rearing and vegetables market sale. At the end of the training the caregvers were provided with 20 business kits:

–           10 soap chemicals sets 

–           2 poultry (eggs for sale)

–           8 vegetables market stalls

We want the children with disabilities to grow up in their home environment. That’s why Watoto Ciao supports low income caregivers with economic empowerment micro-projects to allow them to invest in chicken farming or to build up a small business, such as soap making and vegetable stall stocks for market sale. After all, raising a disabled child means a cut in the family budget, often worsened by social stigma. The money earned with poultry or the business is supposed to compensate that loss. This way, hopefully more children with disability will be medically treated, supported and educated right from the start.

 

(1) Cinotti, A., Righini G. (2018). Raising-awareness and empowerment within the Particip-Action project The issue of disability in Palestine, in Studium Educationis; year XIX – n. 3 – October 2018; dossier