Balancing paid work and child care in a slum of Nairobi, Kenya: The case for centre-based child care

As a growing number of women across sub-Saharan Africa engage in paid work, they face the challenge of finding suitable child care arrangements. Drawing on survey data from over 1,200 mothers and in-depth interviews with 31 of these women, we find that mothers living in a slum of Nairobi, Kenya, employ three main strategies to balance their work and child care responsibilities: (1) combine work and child care, (2) rely on kin and neighbours, or (3) use centre-based care. Mothers reported numerous disadvantages to either bringing their children to work or depending on others for child care assistance. In contrast, mothers highlighted several perceived benefits of centre-based child care for themselves and their children, while noting that costs were often prohibitive. These findings suggest that providing affordable centre-based child care could be a key strategy to improving the lives and welfare of women and children living in African slums

The Adolescent Data Hub: The largest catalog of open access data on adolescents living in low and middle-income countries

The Adolescent Data Hub (ADH) is the first and largest data catalog specifically developed to focus on open access data on adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Developed by the Population Council’s Girl Innovation, Research, and Learning (GIRL) Center, and launched in August 2018, the ADH has grown to include more than 750 data sources that fit the inclusion criteria of: 1) Self-reported data from females and/or males between ages 10-24 years; 2) One or more rounds of data collected in year 2000 or later; 3) Data collected in one or more LMICs; 4) Data are publicly available for download and use. A dynamic resource, the ADH is regularly updated to include new datasets that meet these criteria. The ADH facilitates access to available data on adolescents for researchers attempting to answer important questions related to the lives of adolescents and for donors and policy-makers eager to identify gaps in existing data to inform their future investments