Child Care Program
Community Child Care Program – Bipartite Commission-AHM
In compliance with the «Fifth Agreement»: The Honduran Manufacturers Association (AHM), and the laborers associations (CGT, CUTH and CTH), commit to continue managing and putting into effect the pilot program of Community Child Care for the service of the workers of the manufacturer textile sector, for which within the Nipartite Commission, the pertinent bases and conditions will be established, initiating the program in the city of Choloma and extending at the beginning of the second year, the validity of the present agreement in the cities of San Pedro Sula and Villanueva.
In this framework, the Biipartite Commission and the Honduran Manufacturers Association, designs a Child Care Program for the children of the workers of the industry between the ages of 42 days and 5 years old. This population is part of early childhood, for whom the National Congress of the Republic approved «The public policy of integral action of early childhood (PAIPI)» in 2013.
The diagnosis made and the basic data collected in the studies carried out by the AHM in association with the STSS, highlights the situation of the daughters and sons of the working women in the manufacturing industry of the country, who despite using part of their income for basic care: protection and nutrition, it can be said that their children are still excluded from a quality care system, with the incorporation of other components that aim at integral development, especially for early childhood, being one of the causes are the deficiency of government policies to comply with the right to early childhood development, although it is already stipulated in the current National Government Development Plan and there is a legal and institutional framework and a specific Public Policy, such as it was mentioned.
The Public Policy of comprehensive action for early childhood (PAIPI) highlights the importance of investing in early childhood, to protect the social and physical potential of the child, providing community services that address health, nutrition, education, water and environmental sanitation, emergency care, for households and communities where child care actions are carried out. Comprehensive care emphasizes strategies aimed at the home to support those responsible for the care and attention of the child.
In this context, the child care program emphasizes the strengthening of human capacities, operational and logistical techniques of the entities and persons responsible for child care within an existing community-neighborhood system, composed of child care homes, located in neighborhoods and neighborhoods where the families of workers (mothers / fathers) reside. Also, in the urbanizations that are part of the Social Housing Program of the productive sector.
The Pilot Project that is being developed is about to inaugurate the first two community child care homes, one in the village of La Jutosa, and another in the Villas de Alcalá social housing development, in the municipality of Choloma, where a good amount of working population of the different manufacturing plants reside, with the implementation of the following strategic components: a) Nutrition and basic health care; b) Compliance with legal and registration activities of girls and boys; c) Adequacy of protective physical spaces; c) Compliance with the management system of the child care homes, within the regulations established by the government of Honduras through the DINAF.
The idea is to continue with the pilot experiences in the municipalities of Villanueva and San Pedro Sula, to expand the intervention dynamics to early childhood, the fulfillment of their rights as the stable Convention of the rights of the child, strengthening their integral development , the generation of spaces for the protection of children in the most vulnerable life cycle and the strengthening of policies for the prevention of violence, in their double dimension as victims or as potential members of groups in conflict with the law.
It is important the support provided in the promotion of the Pilot Project, by the different companies of the maquiladora sector, among which stand out:
• Fruit of the Loom: Jerzees New Day and Manufacturas Villanueva
• Elcatex, Genesis and Francis
• New Holland
• Pinehurst
• Gildan Villanueva
• Hanesbrands
• Bay Island