Ms. Alice Byangwa Mujunga
Mother-Child Day Care Center Services
P.O. Box 1663
Kampala, UGANDA
Tel: 256-41-346.597
Fax: 265-41-345.293

NAWOU

National Association of Women Organisations

P.O. Box 1663

Kampala, Uganda

Tel: 256-41-258.463

Fax: 256-41-345.293

E-mail: nawou@infocom.co.ug

Community-based Mother-Child Day Care Center Services (MCDCCS) provide modern, affordable childcare for working mothers living in the slums and rural trading areas of Uganda. The target group are poor, disheartened, and homeless mothers who cannot afford to pay for regular childcare services and who are not reached by national programs that aim to address the needs of women and girl children.

Using an integrated approach, the centers also offer a variety of programs to help these women. Programs include:

• Formal and non-formal education for women (e.g., literacy courses)
• Breastfeeding counseling
• Family planning counseling and services
• Promotion of safe motherhood
• Public health education for children (hygiene and nutrition) and mothers
• Campaigns for free immunization and universal primary education
• Assistance with health issues and immunization
• Promotion of gender equality, and the education and special needs of girl children
• Enforcement of positive child-rearing practices
• Training of childcare workers to reach certificate level
• Creation of employment opportunities for mothers through income-generating projects and micro-credit facilities. Those facilities are, for many women, the only way to cover their social, domestic, and business expansion needs and to pay school fees or for prompt medical treatment for their children.
  

In many African countries, including Uganda, men strive to show their worth by fathering as many children as possible. This is particularly true for the unemployed, low-income working class. Uganda’s illiteracy rate is high, and studies reveal that the number of educated and self-sufficient women is comparatively low. Thus, the overwhelming majority of women in Uganda today are not only illiterate but poor, frustrated, and helpless. They carry the burden of childbearing and child-rearing, often with little or no financial support. High illiteracy and birthrates remain a problem that is stalling the productivity and potentials of many poor women.

The program aims to improve the condition of young children by empowering mothers to become economically productive and less ignorant. When poor women are liberated from constant childcare and become involved in financial activities, the future of their children is safer, healthier, and more productive, and girl children are freed from their surrogate mother role in caring for younger siblings.

A breakthrough can be made only if women and family issues are addressed as a whole taking the specific needs of women into account who are targeted by the program. When low-cost, high-quality childcare services are provided for children ranging in age from a few days to more than 10 years old, mothers can become economically self-reliant, and thus provide better for their children’s basic needs.

In contrast to traditional Ugandan childcare centers, which are expensive and provide services for children aged 3 and older, the MCDCCS centers are geared toward children aged 0-3. The general approach is integrated and holistic, addressing issues such as child health, family planning, gender issues, and the special needs of the girl child. In addition to providing a safe environment for children and educating the mothers, the centers train caregivers and teachers and generate employment opportunities for women through small-scale income-generating projects and micro-credit schemes. This is an important step toward increasing women’s independence and helping them reach a position in which they can negotiate greater control over family planning and birthrates, safe motherhood, and curbing of sexually transmitted diseases. An integrated approach also will foster education of women at the grassroots level and support health initiatives such as immunization campaigns.

The three current centers are wholly oriented toward serving the mother’s needs. Locations close to the workplace (e.g., the market) make it feasible for mothers to leave their children at the centers from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. If the child is younger than one year old, the mother is required to come in periodically for breastfeeding. Hourly drop-off arrangements and after-school care for older children also are provided. The centers help mothers acquire immunization cards, which are required for all children, and keep track of immunization records.

Over time, the centers have become special places for both mothers and children. They have become focal points for learning, teaching, and relaxing—places where women can openly discuss their major concerns of daily life. The centers are also vital havens where battered women can find shelter and counseling. Trust and understanding, which are nurtured in the centers, build a foundation for broader health and education programs, particularly family planning services. Those services are also open to women who don’t have children at the centers.

Basic data on the centers are monitored carefully and regularly. Some important findings follow:

• Between 1987 and 1999, more than 900 mothers used MCDCCS services and about 6,600 children benefited from the program.
• Children who start at the age of a few days to one year old show much better performance results in all aspects of child development and skill learning than children who came to the centers at the age of 3+ years.
• Infant mortality among MCDCCS children is extremely low (3 children out of all 6,600).
• The growing demand for family planning services has led to a decrease in the number of very young children (less than a year old) in the centers, from a daily average of 25 in 1987 to 4 in 1999.

As women are liberated from childcare duties, they can become economically active. The mother’s ability to pay the monthly fees for childcare services promptly is a direct indicator of the reduction of poverty. Despite the fact that fees increased 10 fold between 1987 and 1999, the number of MCDCCS mothers who paid promptly rose from 20% to 50% during that period.

Mothers who attend the centers’ programs soon become agents of positive change within their home community and workplace. Community-level indicators for program evaluation and monitoring indicators include:

• Increase in the number of women who request family planning services
• Improved weight and overall health status of children who attend the centers
• Decrease in infant and child mortality rates
• Improved social habits [*explain?] of women and children
• Increase in school readiness and thus school attendance, especially for girls
• Increase in literacy rate of girls
• Decrease in population growth rate
• Decrease in rate of sexually transmitted disease
• Increase in immunization coverage
• Increase in gross national product

In 1994, a group of Ugandan women, all members of the Uganda National Council of Women*, initiated a project for underprivileged women. The aim was to give poor women struggling in the slum areas of Uganda a chance to become more productive economically, more confident, and better able to look after their children properly. The council identified the burden of continual childbirth and child-rearing as the greatest handicap to economic productivity of women and increased school enrollment rates for girls. Affordable, high-quality, mother-child daycare centers were proposed as a practical solution that would enhance poor children’s chances through a safe, healthy, and stimulating environment.

The project pursues a strategy that combines income-generating efforts with financial support from international donors and assistance from national governmental and non-governmental agencies.

The project generates money by:

• Collecting small fees from the mothers for childcare services. As the potential for economic productivity increases, they are expected to pay higher fees.
• Engaging in income-generating activities, such as poultry (selling eggs and hens) and pig farms
• Operating small farms and gardens for subsistence-level production of local fruits and vegetables
• Charging fees for training services
• Renting out the main hall of the centers for special events

The project itself provides employment possibilities for unemployed mothers who use the centers’ childcare services. An average of 60 workers per month, mostly mothers, are employed to run the three current centers and the related income-generating projects.

The Ministry of Education provides technical assistance to maintain the legal and professional status of the centers and the training school. Family planning equipment is supplied by the City Council of Kampala, Department of Health. In addition, the project receives major technical and financial support at the national level from the National Association of Women’s Organisations in Uganda (NAWOU), which is the local promoter and helps establish international contacts. In the past, SIDA provided a grant of US$15,000, and UNESCO a grant of US$25,000.

At the Development Marketplace 2000, the project received a grant of US$100,000 to:

• Improve and update the three existing centers
• Expand services by starting three new centers
• Increase income-generating potentials by producing children’s books and teaching material and expanding farm production
• Increase local capacity—through training, supervision, improved teaching material, performance assessments, and evaluation—to provide high-quality childcare services
• Introduce new elements, such as music and computer equipment and skills
• Launch a major marketing campaign (posters and radio, newspaper, and TV announcements) to create awareness of child development issues related to health and education in the early years

MCDCCS

• Follow a holistic approach to combat the causes of poverty, not the symptoms.
• Are designed to meet the very specific needs of one of the poorest and most marginalized groups in Uganda: illiterate and excluded women in slum areas.
• Combine the early child development agenda and parent education with job creation and income-generating activities in a unique and creative way.
• Are community-based and adjust their programs to the mothers’ needs.
• Are flexible in providing education and health programs on demand.
• Monitor the children’s growth and motor and cognitive development.
• Have a wide range of spill-over effects, because they establish a linkage between non-formal education for women, health education, and family planning with other national health and immunization campaigns.
• Alleviate poverty from the grassroots level through empowerment.

With six centers, the project plans to become financially sustainable by expanding its income-generating activities, providing professional training for teachers and caregivers, and enhancing the ability of mothers to pay higher fees for childcare.

However, the project’s vision is to have a broader influence on public policy by raising awareness in communities and eventually achieving nationwide impact. For these steps, financial support and technical assistance are needed from national and international agencies.

One of the center’s programs that has not reached out to the majority of MCDCCS women is literacy. The mothers’ key objective is survival; beyond that, they rely on the center’s services to enable them to increase the profits from their business. They cannot imagine spending precious time studying. The mothers also point out that, because they are now able to educate their children, the children can read and write for them if the need arises. As long as women are poor and struggling for survival they will not consider literacy a priority. Only the establishment of daycare centers on a massive scale will make it possible for girl children to start their education early. In the long run, this will help to reduce the number of illiterate women in Uganda dramatically.