[van-announce] Universal Childcare Is a Woman's Right Conference, October 21st Ukrainian Hall 805 E. Pender

[Grassroots Women]

Universal Childcare Is a Woman's Right!: A gathering to strengthen our
vision of childcare that advances women's and children's liberation

 

October 21st, 2006  9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Ukrainian Cultural Centre, 805 E. Pender, Vancouver, BC 

 

Organized by Grassroots Women, Philippine Women Centre of B.C. and
SIKLAB-B.C.

 

Registration: $15-$25 (sliding scale), includes lunch and on-site childcare.
Pre-registration by October 16th required. To register, or if your
organization would like to endorse this event, please email
grassrootswomen at telus.net  or call 604-682-4451. When registering, please
indicate food allergies and the number of children for whom you require
childcare. 

 

*** Frustrated by the poverty wages paid to childcare workers?

*** Angry about seeing opportunities pass you by because you couldn't access
childcare?

*** Offended by the idea that Canada's childcare crisis could be solved by
importing Third World women as domestic workers?

*** Tired of hearing that only those who can "afford it" should have
children?

***Wondering how so much election-time talk about childcare could have
resulted in insultingly inadequate childcare for working class women?

***Want to discuss the broader 'crisis of childcare' in our communities -
beyond bureaucratic discussions of the number and cost of daycare spaces?

*** Hopeful that our society can be reshaped to acknowledge that raising
children is a collective responsibility?

 

If have asked yourself these questions, this conference is for YOU! 

 

Please join us if you want to:

-          Understand Canada's current childcare policy and its impacts on
working class women

-          Oppose the use of the Live in Caregiver Program (bringing women,
primarily from the Third World, to work as domestic workers) as Canada's de
facto childcare program

-          Help strengthen our vision of what a genuinely universal
childcare program would look like

-          Develop strategies to make that vision a reality!  

 

Children welcome! Children's activities provided. 

 

The unmet need for childcare (including daycare, kindercare, or afterschool
care) puts many women and children in crisis and severely stalls the
achievement of genuine women's liberation. This crisis takes on different
dimensions in different communities that cannot be understood without
examining, for example, a child welfare system with epidemic rates of child
apprehension and foster care.  This crisis has long persisted despite the
fleeting attention it receives during election campaigns.

 

For more than a decade, the Philippine Women Centre of B.C. and SIKLAB-B.C
has been campaigning to "Scrap the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP)," a
policy of the Canadian government that has brought in Third World women,
primarily from the Philippines, to serve as private live-in caregivers for
children, the elderly, and the disabled in the homes of middle and upper
class families. Since its beginnings in 1995, Grassroots Women has
identified the question of childcare as central to the lives of working
class women, and has actively campaigned since 1999 for childcare that meets
our needs, in addition to supporting the "Scrap the LCP" campaign. 

 

These three organizations have come together to host Universal Childcare Is
a Woman's Right!: A gathering to strengthen our vision of childcare that
advances women's and children's liberation, October 21st, as public debate
around childcare stirs once again with recent changes to government funding
policies. However, the debate has occurred within an impossibly narrow
range, ignoring the multiple and growing pressures on working class
communities that undermine the ability to take care of children, which must
be accounted for when examining the current childcare crisis. This
conference will provide space for us to analyze this crisis as we work
together to build our vision that acknowledges childcare as a collective
responsibility that reflects the kind of society we want for the future of
our families.

 

For more information, please call 604-682-4451 or email
grassrootswomen at telus.net. 

 

------

Grassroots Women

1115B E. Hastings (entrance on Glen)

Vancouver, BC V6A 1S3

web: www3.telus.net/grassrootswomen

email: grassrootswomen at telus.net

phone: 604-682-4451 (fax same #, please call first)