Invest in Childcare

The project aims to address inequalities and poverty quality childcare and the unequal distribution of care work to empower women. Addressing paid and unpaid care work is a key priority for the Government of Canada and for implementing Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP). Through quality childcare the program promotes dual benefits improved child development outcomes and women’s economic participation. It also aims to enable job creation in the childcare sector support operational work and research (targeting approximately 40 low-and middle-income countries) and use the work to influence governments’ interest in prioritizing and addressing childcare in increasingly constrained resources. Project activities fall under two funding streams: (1) bank-executed funding ($20 million) to support childcare investments in the country and develop a pipeline of operations while working closely with governments. This includes catalytic grants provided to countries for analytical work to generate knowledge to make the case for childcare quality operations technical support for implementation and generating data and evidence to find solutions and develop tools. Contributing to Early Years Fellowship and Engaging Policymakers in Early Childhood programs; (2) recipient-executed funding ($80-$100 million) flows directly to governments to incentivize governments to invest scarce project finance and public resources into childcare. These funds will be available to country teams on a 1:1 match basis (leveraging funding from the International Development Association (DA) the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) domestic or other resources) up to a maximum of $10 million per country. This will support countries in scaling childcare up through public approaches to help get childcare firmly on the agenda and build political commitment and domestic financing.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved gender-sensitive childcare policies and enabling environments; (2) enhanced provision of accessible affordable and quality gender-sensitive childcare solutions to promote women’s economic empowerment; and (3) improved capacity of governments and other stakeholders to promote childcare solutions and to develop gender-sensitive knowledge products and tools.