In the third episode of the governance building block we move on to the discussion of legal frameworks and social protection.
How can legal provisions of participation, access to information, transparency and equality be leveraged to include those workers into social protection systems? What are the main legal frameworks? How does administrative justice work for this end and how it can be used a tool for informal workers in their advocacy efforts? To help us understand these questions we invited Pamhidzai Bamu. 

Pamhi holds a masters and a PhD in Labour Law from the University of Cape Town. She is currently the President of the African Labour Law Society. She has consulted for the International Labour Organisation and the Southern African Development Community on various projects. She is currently the Africa Coordinator of WIEGO’s Law Programme.

***

References

Social Protection for Self-Employed Informal Workers in Sub-Saharan Africa: A rights-based assessment of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis https://www.wiego.org/publications/social-protection-self-employed-informal-workers-sub-saharan-africa-rights-based 

R202 - Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) https://normlex.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:3065524 

C189 - Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) https://normlex.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C189 

African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights
 https://au.int/en/treaties/african-charter-human-and-peoples-rights

*Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons)

#41 Governance, Social Protection And Law

In the fourth and last episode of the governance building block we dive into the discussion of social dialogue and social protection for informal workers.
But what does social dialogue actually mean? How can in be used as a tool to improve social protection schemes to better include informal workers? What are the aspects we should look at when analysing these spaces and what are the main barriers workers in the informal employment face to access them? To help us understand these questions we invited two guests.
 
First, we are going to talk to Jane Barrett, who will set the stage and introduce us to the main aspects of social dialogue, the power dynamics and how these spaces should work. Jane is the former Organization and Representation programme director at WIEGO. She has extensive experience in collective bargaining, membership recruitment and organizing, trade union membership and leadership education, research and policy advocacy.

In the second part of the episode we talk to Aura Sevilla, who will talk about the concrete social dialogue experiences in Southeast Asia. Aura is the Southeast Asia focal point of the Social Protection programme at WIEGO. She has been working in a study report analysing six countries in the region: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand.


*Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons)

References

Informal workers and dialogue for social protection, Social Protection Responses to COVID-19 #3, by Annie Devenish and Cyrus Afshar  https://www.wiego.org/social-protection-responses-covid-19/  

Social Dialogue for the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy, by Global Deal https://www.wiego.org/research-library-publications/social-dialogue-transition-informal-formal-economy/ 

#42 Social Dialogue and Social Protection for Informal Workers

Poverty Unpacked chats are back!

In January 2025, hear about forthcoming book The Empathy Fix, two new reports on astonishing and infuriating wealth inequality and providing input on the issue of welfare and conditionality.

41. Poverty Unpacked - January chat

In 2019, Lebanon witnessed the start of one of the most severe socio-economic crises globally since the mid-nineteenth century, plunging many Lebanese into poverty.  

Amid the hardships, a new hope emerged in 2021. The World Bank set up a $246 million social safety net project and the Government of Lebanon (GoL) designed a registration platform for this program, with the help of Siren Associates, called DAEM (Arabic for "support"). Built in record time, DAEM is more than just a registry; it’s a fully localized social protection system that provides a lifeline to Lebanese families hit by crisis.

In this episode, we hear from the GoL, CGAP, the World Bank, and Siren Associates about how collaboration was key to DAEM’s success and how, even in the most challenging conditions, it’s possible to design solutions that go beyond emergency relief and sow the seeds for a more inclusive financial system.  

This is Season 2, Episode 6 of CGAP's podcast, Inclusive Finance Frontiers. 

Featured Voices
Ahmed Fatih Ortakaya, Senior Social Protection Specialist, World Bank
Carole Alsharabati, Research Director, SIREN Associates
Marie Louise Abou Jaoudeh, Presidency of the Council of Ministers (PCM) of the Government of Lebanon
Nadine Chehade, Senior Financial Sector Specialist, World Bank 
Souraya Sbeih, Consultant, CGAP 
Listen and subscribe for free on your favorite platform. To learn more, visit www.cgap.org. To share feedback, connect with us at podcast@cgap.org. 

 

This episode incorporates a news report from PBS NewsHour, Financial crisis leads some in Lebanon to rob banks to access their money.

Coding Through Crisis: Building a Digital Social Protection System in Lebanon

In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first part of the topic on delivery and provision of social protection. We will be looking at the innovations in the delivery of services and cash grants, focusing on informal workers and on the role that informal workers organizations might have in improving access to these workers by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or benefits.

To open this block, we will turn to Africa and look into three cases of provision of child care services. First, we go to South Africa, to talk to Richard Dobson about the pop-up child care facility in the Warwick Junction market, in Durban. Richard is an architect and co-founder of the NGO Asiye eTafuleni. Next, we move to Accra, in Ghana, to talk to Dorcas Ansah, WIEGO’s Accra Focal city coordinator. We discussed the guidelines for implementing child care facilities in the Ghanaian capital markets and the plans for expanding the initiative.

We finish our tour in Rwanda, where the market vendors association SITRIECY is also implementing child care facilities in the Kigali markets. We talked to SITRIECY’s secretary-general and StreetNet International treasurer Jeanette Nyiramassengesho. She explained their approach to combine provision of child care for informal workers’ children in markets with the creation of a community savings group.

***
Learn more

- WIEGO: Child Care in Markets: An E-Book https://www.wiego.org/research-library-publications/child-care-in-markets/ 
 - Working in Warwick: Including Street Traders in Urban Plans
https://www.wiego.org/research-library-publications/working-warwick-including-street-traders-urban-plans/
- WIEGO - Child Care in Markets project: https://www.wiego.org/project/child-care-markets/ 
- Guidelines and Standards for Day-Care Centres in and around Markets in Ghana, by Susan Sabaa, Dela Quarshie-Twum  https://www.wiego.org/advocacy-worker-education-resources/guidelines-and-standards-day-care-centres-and-around-markets-ghana/
- Webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn9niHLL8vI 
- About Asiye eTafuleni https://aet.org.za/about-asiye-etafuleni/our-story/


#43 Workers-led Delivery of Child Care in Markets

Round up of news on poverty from around the world by host Dr Keetie Roelen. 

From reports on child poverty to a call for submission for monologues on homelessness - listen now.

For list of links to all items in this episode, head over to poverty-unpacked.org

45. Poverty Unpacked - May chat

In this episode we take a pause from the discussion around delivery and provision of social protection benefits and take a fresh look at the challenges to finance social protection in a time of very deep transformations in the world of work. Among these changes, we have increasing automation, swift advances in artificial intelligence and the emergence of forms of capital-labour relations through the mediation of platforms.

These multiple processes have triggered an intense discussion about how social protection systems should be or could be financed – and by whom. It was within this ongoing debate that Luca Pelerano and Florian Juergens-Grant have recently published an op-ed at Project Syndicate. In this article, they analysed some of these challenges and, most importantly, advanced some possible innovative alternatives to address them. Luca and Florian will be our guests in this special episode.

Luca Pelerano is a social protection specialist and works at the Social Protection Department of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and he has more than 15 years of experience in policy reform. Florian is the Global Social Protection Advisor at WIEGO, and his work focuses mainly on the issues regarding the financing of social protection for informal workers, the impacts of social protection programmes on labour markets, workers and their families; as well as the design of inclusive social insurance systems.

***

Learn more
Future-Proofing Social Protection, by Luca Pelerano and Florian Juergens-Grant - https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/how-to-ensure-sustainable-financing-social-insurance-by-florian-juergens-grant-and-luca-pellerano-2025-03s


#44 Towards a social insurance levy on capital

With only five years to go before the goal of ending extreme child poverty, we are off track to achieve this. But there are valuable lessons from countries that have made significant progress to accelerate efforts.

In this episode, we discuss what works to reduce child poverty with members of the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty.

Find out more on poverty-unpacked.org. 

46. What works to reduce child poverty – Global Coalition to End Child Poverty

Time for another Poverty Unpacked chat!

This month features research on poverty in new housing areas in UK and the role of coloniality in social protection policy in Africa. Plus celebrating six months since publication of The Empathy Fix book!

Check out all the links and more on https://poverty-unpacked.org

47. Poverty Unpacked - July chat

In this episode, we resume the building block of our social protection solar system on the topic of delivery and provision of social protection. In this second episode of the series, we will turn to India, to understand how informal workers organizations can play an important role to improve access to their members by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or benefits.
 
The Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA, set up in India their so-called Shakti Kendras, or SSKs.  I talked to Susan Thomas, the National Coordinator of Health and Childcare programmes at the Lok Swas-thya SEWA Trust (LSST), to learn more about this worker-led initiative.
Susan explained how the Shakti Kendras operates, how they help informal workers to access social protection in India, how digital tools are being integrated in their work, as well as the next steps of the Shakti Kendras.

***

Learn more:

-BLOG: Bridges to Better Lives: SEWA’s Community Health Workers (October 05, 2019), by Annie Devenish, Laura Alfers https://www.wiego.org/blog/bridges-better-lives-sewas-community-health-workers/

-We are the bridge’: an implementation research study of SEWA Shakti Kendras to improve community engagement in publicly funded health insurance in Gujarat, India (2022), by Susan Thomas, Sharmada Sivaram, Zubin Shroff, Ajay Mahal, Sapna Desai https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/Suppl_6/e008888 

-BLOG: In India, One-stop Shops Increase Access to Healthcare, Nutrition and Social Security Services for Working Poor (May 15, 2017), by Laura Alfers https://www.wiego.org/blog/india-one-stop-shops-increase-access-healthcare-nutrition-and-social-security-services-working/ 


*Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons)

#45 Workers-led delivery of Healthcare and Social Protection

Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty.  Public policies and social protection schemes often do not consider these  workers, leaving them vulnerable to income losses and struggling to cope after an event or shock. In this monthly podcast we will discuss some of the most pressing issues related to social protection from the perspective of informal workers, including debates around the future of work, demographic changes and the informal economy, as well as  social services, like child care and health that can protect informal workers’ incomes. Subscribe to the “Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection” to learn more about WIEGO’s cutting-edge research and hear from informal workers organisations about the debates, policies, successes and challenges they face in accessing and reforming social protection systems.

In conversation with others, we explore how poverty affects the mind, relationships, emotions and society as a whole, and what can be done to change it. Hear from activists, researchers, policy makers, and those with lived experience of poverty around the world.

New tracks tagged #Social Protection