Kindergartens National Committee welcomes Business Clinic project 

AMMAN — The Kindergartens National Committee (KNC) Director Dima Qaisi on Monday welcomed an International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Association of Banks in Jordan’s (ABJ) joint Business Clinic project, which helped 24 owners of private kindergartens run their establishments more innovatively and practically.

“We are very proud to be part of this initiative because we faced many challenges during COVID 19 and we reached out to the government to help us with our sector but unfortunately we were closed for 18 months,” Qaisi said.

Many of the owners had to shut down because of financial burdens but this new initiative “will help us move forward and continue to be sustainable”, Qaisi told The Jordan Times.

This will surely help in boosting the Jordanian economy and “we hope that we will see more support from the Jordanian government,” Qaisi added.

“We listened to the demands of female owners of KGs, planned and acted jointly,” said ILO Gender Technical Specialist Regional Office for Arab States Reem Aslan.

The ILO official added that “we jointly established a national committee and succeeded in many ways especially with the Central Bank of Jordan and with the Social Security Corporation to maintain their businesses and sustain the employment of caregivers”.

“Jordan experienced one of the world’s strictest lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a protracted closure of childcare enterprises, which exacerbated financial insecurity of their owners, particularly women,” according to Aslan.

The ILO in Jordan provided support for these women by enabling them to gain access to formal financing mechanisms and work closely with public and private financial organisations, Aslan added.

“This led to the inclusion of childcare enterprises in wage subsidy programmes and to postponing their loan repayments,” Aslan told The Jordan Times.

The initiative was launched last week in the presence of Norwegian Ambassador Espen Lindbæck, and Swedish Ambassador Alexandra Rydmark.

The initiative aims to further support the resilience and financial sustainability of female owners of childcare enterprises by improving their business management skills and helping meet financial obligations accumulated due to the COVID-19 crisis.

The effort seeks to address structural causes of inequalities preventing women from accessing equal opportunities in financial services and decent work, and from reaching their full economic potential. 

“The 24 kindergartens are only the beginning and there will be more establishments benefitting from the Business Clinic project in the near future,” Aslan added.

This initiative is part of the UN Women-ILO Joint Programme and is implemented in partnership with Sida and the government of Norway.