Training manual Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This manual was developed for domestic workers, a growing category of care providers, in the context of the development cooperation project Decent Work and the Care Economy: Recognizing, Rewarding and
Redistributing Care Work (GLO/15/42/FLA), funded by the Government of Flanders. Initially intended for domestic workers working in the Middle East, the manual may be useful also outside the intended geographical scope.

The training manual is targeted to domestic workers’ organizations, civil society and not for profit organizations that provide skills to domestic workers for use with members or domestic workers in the communities where they live and work.

The manual aims to:
1. Empower domestic workers with new skills that will expand the employment opportunities available to them, enable their career progression towards higher complexity tasks within the sector, and mitigate the employment disputes that result from underperformance, excessive emotional attachment to the children in their care, and/or cross-cultural conflicts. It is worth noting here that employers’ perceptions about domestic workers’ performance can be subjective, rooted in classism, casteism or racism, and not solely related to
workers’ actual performance;

2. Build the capacity of domestic workers’ organizations and NGOs working with domestic workers to establish care centres for their members with a view to increasing their chances of engaging in full-time remunerated employment.
The manual provides guidance on setting up care centres that comply with hygiene and safety protocols and are conducive to the physical, economic and emotional development of children; and,

3. Strengthen the role of domestic workers’ organizations in their communities, build their capacity to reach out to new membership, and provide them with a platform to bargain for higher wages for higher skilled domestic workers.
The manual is meant to be accessible to a heterogeneous group of participants some of whom have a very limited educational attainment.
The modules are designed to build on the participants’ training and employment trajectories to identify their point of departure in relation to childcare and subsequently facilitate reflection on the role and competencies of a childcare giver.