1. ARUGAAN - Manila, Philippines 

ARUGAAN is a home centre organised by groups of working mothers, largely the urban poor. Arugaan in Filipino means to nurture fully or to take care of entirely. The centre cares for babies whose ages range from one and half months to three and half years. The ARUGAAN centre is a learning therapy for the parents where discussions are held on health, life style, parent-child relationship. ARUGAAN was instrumental in making Quezon city the first to declare itself a mother-baby-friendly municipality. A core part of the programme involves organising a caucus among policy makers in support of activities already in place for working women. They include nine Metro Manila Mayors, three government officials from the departments of health, social welfare, and labour, five employers and five women worker union leaders.  

2. Aims & Objectives  

To facilitate the process in the creation of creche at workplaces with policy-makers, employers and union officers, and to provide support systems for working women with regard to child care, breastfeeding counseling, health and nutrition information; to create mother-support groups; and to establish mother-friendly initiatives. It aimed to address issues such as how to deal with the specific needs of working women particularly the pregnant and those with young children as well as how to integrate breastfeeding the child while at work. 

3. Initiating the Creation of Creche at Workplaces  

How it all began ... A friendly employer, an exporter of children's garments named Blue Bell, referred ARUGAAN to another friendly owner Ditas Hernandez, of Victory International Garments. With only one meeting, an agreement was reached, whereby, ARUGAAN would be directly responsible for the day care programme while the company would provide the facilities to include space, water, and electricity. It was mutually agreed that ARUGAAN's role is to facilitate their day care programme in transition towards complete autonomy. The agreement was spelled out in a two-page description of the plans and understanding. 

4. Project Implementation  

ARUGAAN obtained from the company administration, a list of women who were pregnant, on maternity leave, and who had resumed work after childbirth, and those with toddlers. ARUGAAN workers then distributed among the potential beneficiaries, a personalised letter and survey forms for information about themselves, their food habits, health and child care expenses. Initially an employee supervisor helped in this process. This was important because the ARUGAAN workers were not allowed entry into the work sites on grounds of security as technically they were not workers. 

The factory meeting between the workers and ARUGAAN at break time discussed the needs and expectations of the workers in terms of child care. The result of the survey was presented as basis for the development of the training needs and programme. Seminar training were scheduled during the workers' one-hour lunch time on health, particularly children's colds and cough, pregnancy and care, family planning and food and nutrition. The 30-minute informal seminar interaction elicited warm rapport and acquaintances that led to the discussion of roles and responsibilities in setting up of the day-care.  

Full attendance to the meetings and seminars was a prerequisite for acceptance of their children. In the beginning, only toddlers aged between 2 years and 4 years were enrolled. This was because the mothers were wary of ARUGAAN workers as they had no previous experience with them. Moreover, they could not bring themselves to leave their infants in the care of strangers. This was frustrating for ARUGAAN. 

In August, many mothers braved the rains and typhoon and arrived at work with their children wrapped in raincoat. In three months the number of infants and toddlers at the centre increased to 27. A fee of P10 (25 pesos = US$1) was charged per day to cover food, custodial service and programme for nine hours. During the seminar sessions on food and nutrition, ARUGAAN care-givers discovered that the workers spent P12 on snacks of coca cola and potato chips. Hence their discussion at the seminar focused on the correlation of junk-food, advertising impact, health implications and expenses. The Mother-to-mother counseling became a continuous process for ARUGAAN care-givers as an alternative programme for a healthy diet and lifestyle. The counseling service also brought up problems of domestic violence and unemployment among their husbands. 

After the programme began in earnest, ARUGAAN monitored the programme closely for two months until it became structured. The ARUGAAN staff were required to be at the centre at 7 am because the work shift began at 7.30 am. The centre closed at 5 p.m. and another 30 minutes were spent in clearing the centre. Administrative meetings took place in the evenings on the 15th and 30th of each month which were pay days. The staff are treated to a special dinner during the get-together.  

This working creche, established at Victory Undergarments Incorporated by ARUGAAN is an example of a successful working creche that shows to all sectors that it is possible to create a support service for breastfeeding working women.  

5. Achievements  

ARUGAAN found that the breastfeeding practice for working women in transition from home to work site after maternity leave became easy as long as they had intensive counseling during pregnancy, after birth and hence counseling visits at home became part of ARUGAAN day care services. Additional counseling was required for mothers whose toddlers or even infants were hooked on to the bottle.  

Breastfeeding babies are wet-nursed by surrogate mothers who bring their own babies to the centre. Re-lactation was encouraged for the bottle-fed infants and they were fed on donor's breast milk through cup. Babies aged six months and above were given nutritious home made baby food provided by the creche every two hours in order to wean them from the bottle. The children who were fed at the centre were found to have gained weight and were ill less often with colds, coughs, asthma, allergies, and diarrhea. A non-dairy diet was strictly implemented these illnesses. 

The mothers too, found that they benefited by better health and economic savings. As such, the working mothers were satisfied and were more productive at work. They gained new confidence and considered forming unions.  

ARUGAAN care-givers are trained in issues of women, health, food, early child education and leadership skills. They were experienced mothers who also train young, single women. The creche's fees contributed to the operational expenses. Many mothers delayed payment due to their husband's unemployment and poverty. Many mothers could not bring diapers, towels and baby clothes because they did not have enough or they brought them, still wet from the laundry done the day before. The creche suffered a deficit budget, because the fees charged could not cover the expenses of staff salaries.  

There were some suggestions to generate income to make the creche self-sufficient. These are: · each parent to contribute a family member, an adult, as trainee at the creche, who can later be absorbed as worker, or the training could be useful in future. · three parents to be assigned in a day to bring in three trainees. If the parent cannot provide a trainee then they must contribute an equivalent of their day's pay for the available care giver. · during the evenings or in their free time, the parents can sew baby clothes, maternity dresses or other useful materials for sale, reserving a percentage of the sale price for the creche funds. · Parents could operate a food stall for take-home meals and a percentage of the proceeds would be given to the creche. 

At the onset, difficulty in understanding the benefits of breastfeeding at individual levels was encountered, especially that of intergrating breastfeeding while working. Moreover, there were no breastfeeding inputs from the women's doctors during prenatal check ups. Initially, some mothers insisted on bottlefeeding as prescribed by their doctors. Medical consultation, indepth counseling and seminar training by ARUGAAN friend-doctors was implemented to assure the workers that breast was beast.  

After three months, a parent meeting was held for assessment. Economic savings were discussed and appreciated as brought about by the program of ARUGAAN creche. Both workers and employer experienced the significant positive changes on the child, the mother and their work output (higher quota). More importantly, trust was established and appreciation was expressed to ARUGAAN as the parents saw the remarkable changes in their child's development. Through good eating habits and access to their mothers, the children became happy, healthy and intelligent.  

This pilot creche instituted by ARUGAAN at the factory was facilitated through consultation with the employer who was enthusiastic and supportive of the initiative and thus, she is classified as a friendly employer. The Department of Labor aided ARUGAAN with financial assistance for some of the expenses incurred in providing the fixtures, program and services for a year, although the worker-beneficiaries also paid a small enrollment fee daily per child. The rich experiences at the pilot creche at this factory helped to propel ARUGAAN's initiatives at local government institutions, involving active policy-makers such as the Mayor and Councilors with legislative directives to make similar undertakings in other workplaces.  

The success of the creche at this garment export factory has resulted in talks to set-up similar undertaking in some factories and government offices. ARUGAAN organised caucuses and video shows: "Mothers' Right to Work, Workers' Right to Motherhood", which featured the Victory International Garments experiences. 

Presently, a three-month-old creche has been set up by ARUGAAN with the federation of women's unions in a factory called Sun-Moon. It is a garments factory that manufactures jackets and jogging pants for Nike, USA. The workers' union lent their office as venue for the creche while waiting for the renovation of the small building. Also, the workers contribute a part of their salaries (even those who don't have children in the creche) in order to sustain the creche operation. the WABA bridge fund made this possible by facilitating the process.