Asturias Backs Women Care Workers in Cali With New ILO Community Support Agreement

The project focuses on strengthening women-led social and solidarity economy organizations that provide essential services to their communities, particularly in places affected by economic vulnerability.

Women who prepare community meals and provide care and social support in Cali, Colombia, are at the centre of a new collaboration agreement approved by the regional government of Asturias, Spain, with the International Labour Organization (ILO). The agreement supports a project to improve their working and economic conditions, bringing attention to the people whose daily efforts help communities cope with economic hardship and inequality. For these women, providing essential services often means taking on considerable responsibility under precarious conditions, with protection and recognition that do not reflect the value of their contribution.

Support for the women's communities depends on

The project focuses on strengthening women-led social and solidarity economy organizations that provide essential services to their communities, particularly in places affected by economic vulnerability. These organizations bring people together around shared needs, making care and social support part of a collective effort to improve everyday life. Strengthening them means supporting the structures through which women organize their work and respond to the needs of the people around them, with greater attention to the economic and working conditions that make those services possible.

Among the organizations benefiting from the initiative are the community soup kitchen Delicias de mujer: algo diferente and the group Madres Comunitarias de Brisas de Mayo. Both play a leading role in providing care and social support in their communities, where their work contributes to well-being in ways that can be overlooked when care is treated as an informal responsibility. Their inclusion places the project close to the women already delivering these services and the community organizations through which that work takes shape.

Recognition must reach working conditions

Greater protection and recognition for these women are central to the initiative, because acknowledging the importance of community care has practical meaning only when attention reaches the conditions under which it is provided. The project addresses the gap between the essential contribution of this work and the precarious circumstances in which it is often carried out. Its focus on women-led organizations connects support for community services with support for the workers behind them, making their economic circumstances and working lives a core part of the effort.

The initiative forms part of the ILO's global work on the care economy, which promotes policies and measures to recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work, alongside decent work and better conditions for paid care workers. This approach treats care as a shared social responsibility and gives visibility to the time, effort and labour involved in supporting others. The Cali project brings that broader commitment into a local setting through organizations whose services are closely connected to community life.

A feminist cooperation commitment in practice

For Asturias, the agreement reflects its commitment to transformative feminist development cooperation and its relationship with Colombia, one of the priority countries identified in the region's international cooperation policy. Supporting women-led care organizations connects that commitment to the everyday realities of women working in communities marked by inequality. The project puts their contribution, protection and economic conditions at the centre of cooperation, recognizing that stronger community services depend on better support for the people who provide them.