Partner-led and participatory

At the heart of WE-Care’s approach is the firm belief that sustainable and meaningful change is best achieved through genuine collaboration. This value means that we actively seek out and prioritize partnerships with local organizations, community leaders, and the women and girls we aim to serve. We don’t just work for them; we work with them. Our initiatives are shaped by their insights, experiences, and needs, ensuring that our programs are relevant, culturally sensitive, and truly impactful. This participatory approach fosters ownership, builds local capacity, and ensures that the voices of those most affected are central to the solutions we develop together.

Inclusive and empowering

WE-Care is deeply committed to creating spaces and opportunities where all women and girls feel valued, respected, and empowered to reach their full potential. We actively work to dismantle barriers that exclude marginalized groups, ensuring that our programs are accessible and responsive to diverse needs. Our focus goes beyond simply providing assistance; we strive to equip women and girls with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to advocate for themselves, make informed decisions, and become agents of change in their own lives and communities. We believe in fostering a sense of agency and collective power.

Mutually accountable and intentional

We hold ourselves and our partners to the highest standards of accountability and transparency. This means establishing clear goals, tracking progress rigorously, and being open and honest about our successes and challenges. We approach our work with intention, carefully considering the potential impact of our actions and ensuring that our interventions are aligned with our overarching mission of advancing gender equality in unpaid care. This value underscores our commitment to responsible stewardship of resources and to building trust with our partners and the communities we serve through clear communication, shared responsibility, and a relentless focus on achieving measurable and lasting positive change.

Combining infrastructure and social norms interventions frees up women’s time.

Our research indicates that simply improving public infrastructure and time- and labor-saving equipment to reduce women’s unpaid care work may unintentionally increase their time spent on care work (e.g., cooking three times a day instead of two if they have a more efficient stove), or redistribute it within the household to other women or girls, without ongoing efforts to shift social norms and increase men’s engagement through regular training and awareness.

The involvement of men and boys is critical.

In our experience, men are often very positive about sharing unpaid care work, particularly if they see others doing it. Working with male ‘care champions’ and cultural or religious leaders has helped to cascade messages and provide positive examples, challenging existing perceptions of masculinity. Creating spaces for discussion has enabled men and boys to reflect on unpaid care roles and to commit to small and easy actions for change in their own lives.

Media can help strengthen public discourse.

Traditional and social media have a strong role to play in bringing unpaid care and domestic work (normally considered a private issue) into the public domain. Continuous investment in a wide range of media is important to expand the reach of—and continually reinforce—positive messages on care work, so that dialogue that begins with social norms activities in homes and communities can continue in public spaces.

Communities should be involved in creating their own solutions.

Unpaid care and domestic work is a contentious issue that goes to the heart of deeply ingrained gender roles and norms. WE-Care used the Rapid Care Analysis to talk to men and women at community level to find out which care tasks are the most difficult and time consuming and what they would like to change. This enabled the design of context-specific time- and labor-saving equipment to reduce the time required for domestic tasks. It highlighted that involving communities in planning and designing their own care-related interventions fosters ownership and accountability, minimises risks of conflicts, and contributes to sustainability. It can also help to spark dialogue and debate.

Working at sub-national level with local government is key to success and sustainability.

It is often easier to get tangible budget commitments and policy change at sub-national level—where there are devolved governments with budget and policy responsibility—than at national level. Working closely with champions in government, including involving them in Rapid Care Analysis discussions with communities, has encouraged them to take ownership of the care agenda within their own departments and has been critical to success.

Social norms change doesn’t happen overnight—but behavior change can.

Participation in social norms activities can help to incentivize change in behaviors, e.g., men doing more care work, in a relatively short space of time. To achieve long-term shifts in social norms, there needs to be investment in awareness-raising initiatives that can be scaled up alongside infrastructure and policy change to reach large numbers of people within different target groups, including religious leaders, cultural leaders, and politicians, among others.