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ILO-DFID Partnership Programme on Fair Recruitment and Decent Work for Women Migrant Workers in South Asia and the Middle East -Phase II - Midterm evaluation

eval_number:

2868

eval_url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/eval/2868

lessons_learned:

themes:

theme:

Vulnerable groups

category:

Conditions of work & equality

---

comments:

Prospective women migrant workers, host communities, community based organisations, school, local government organisations.

challenges:

N/A

success:

N/A

context:

Countries of Origin, facilitated through organisations representing or working closely with prospective, existing or returnee women migrant workers. Use of returnee migrant workers in supporting the facilitation of discussions and pre-decision orientation training.

description:

Facilitating choice: Pre-departure training and recruitment processes. An early lesson of WIF1 was the dangers of hiring training and capacity building organisations that are wholly didactic in their delivery style. Adopting a strategic focus on women’s empowerment and their ability to make informed choices signalled a huge shift in the aims and style of WIF. Nevertheless, empowering potential or actual migrant women is easier said than done in a political economic system that favours recruitment agencies and employers, and where the agents that seek out potential women migrants have a far greater reach than an orientation programme is ever likely to have. A lesson learned from Nepal is the importance of ensuring such training is voluntary and involving returnee migrant women workers as trainers if possible. From India, the value of having solidarity based organisations with membership networks was also learned. The content of all conversations should be relevant to women’s mobility, women’s work and well-being, locally available resources and the political context of migration. Methods should be interactive and should encourage communication and learning for both individuals and groups. Settings and training content are more effective when they are informal. Perceptions about training should be managed carefully depending on local stigma associated with women’s mobility and paid work. This is all a long reach from the early days of training in Chhattisgarh and shows how far WIF has come in this regard. In this phase too, Bangladesh has now also been fully incorporated in this process with partners that do have strong community networks, and the lessons learnt from India and Nepal applied there too

administrative_issues:

N/A

url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/lessons/229449

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location:

country:

Asia and the Pacific - regional

region:

Asia and the Pacific

---

eval_title:

ILO-DFID Partnership Programme on Fair Recruitment and Decent Work for Women Migrant Workers in South Asia and the Middle East -Phase II - Midterm evaluation