Communico Society - Forming an association of Babysitters - informing and empowering practices (2022)

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The project aims to support the self-organizing of babysitters and domestic workers to improve their working conditions.

The organization will form a babysitters' Association during the project's first phase. The organizers are two middle-aged women with over ten years of experience working as nannies and having a wide circle of female acquaintances engaged in domestic work.

As an organized unity, the Association will support its female members in several directions:

a. Employment – the association members will be informed about the available job opportunities. Meantime, the Association will design and disseminate a contract that will define the form of labour relationship between the employer and the employee. The agreement will describe the duties and rights of the employee as well as the obligations of the employer in terms of labour relations, overtime pay, and other aspects. The contract will be prepared in the course of the project with the involvement of a legal consultant.

 b. Legal counselling – The Association will become a place for legal consultation for those engaged in domestic labour. Discussions will be initiated in the special babysitters' group on social networks, and answers will be found among the group members (some of the babysitters have legal backgrounds).

Babysitters will choose a topic of discussion through a Facebook group by themselves and will meet to discuss it. Discussion topics may include a verbal agreement with the employer, remuneration, everyday communication with the child's parents, dealing with a problematic case. or any other issue.

Experiences and gathered information through these meetings will turn into the guidebook developed by the women. The guidebook will be published and disseminated before the completion of the project. The process will be led by the project organizers and completed by the association members.