Project profile — Invest in Childcare

• Africa, regional (40.00%)
• America, regional (35.00%)
• Far East Asia, regional (25.00%)

• Public sector policy and administrative management:
Public sector policy and administrative management (15110) (10.00%)
Public finance management (15111) (5.00%)
Domestic Revenue Mobilisation (15114) (5.00%)
Budget planning (15117) (15.00%)
Legal and judicial development (15130) (5.00%)
Women's rights organisations and movements, and government institutions (15170) (30.00%)
• Government and civil society: Government and civil society statistics and data (15196) (10.00%)
• Other Social Infrastructure And Services: Social services (incl youth development and women+ children) (16015) (20.00%)

• Gender equality (significant objective)
• Environmental sustainability (cross-cutting) (not targeted)
• Participatory development and good governance (not targeted)
• Trade development (not targeted)
• Biodiversity (not targeted)
• Climate change mitigation (not targeted)
• Climate Change Adaptation (not targeted)
• Urban issues (not targeted)
• Desertification (not targeted)
• Children's issues (not targeted)
• Youth Issues (not targeted)
• Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) (not targeted)
• Indigenous Issues (not targeted)
• Disability (not targeted)
• Nutrition (significant objective)
• ICT as a tool for development (not targeted)

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.

Results achieved by the World Bank through the support of the Government of Canada and other international donors as of December 2023 include: (1) childcare services and infrastructure supported in over 28 countries; 26 small catalytic grants approved to focus on data gathering for advocacy and government engagement and piloting of quality approaches to childcare; and a new childcare module by “Women, Business and the Law” developed to assess 190 countries and examine the legal and regulatory environment for childcare; (2) 5 grants, of $2-$5 million USD, awarded to receive match funding for childcare activities to be implemented by governments (in Cote d’Ivoire, Moldova, Rwanda, Senegal, and Somalia; 56% of the catalytic grants and 80% of the match funding grants are in Sub-Saharan Africa); and (3) multi-session childcare training rolled out to 14 World Bank Early Years Fellows based in low- and middle-income countries as part of internal and external capacity building. The self-paced course will be publicly available in 2024, and a finalized list of countries to roll out the course on Engaging Policymakers.

• Proactive disclosure