A Lifetime of Care: Rethinking Unpaid Work, Gender and Innovation

​This International Day of Care and Support, join The Washing Machine Project and Global Learning for Sustainability for a conversation exploring unpaid care, gender and domestic work across a lifetime.

​We’ll look at how care and household responsibilities can shape people’s lives from childhood through adolescence, working age and older age, and how this can affect education, health, livelihoods, income and opportunity.

​We’ll focus particularly on laundry, exploring why this often-overlooked form of unpaid work matters, who carries the burden, and what the wider consequences can be. We’ll bring this to life through stories and experiences from communities that both organisations have worked with.

​We’ll also explore where innovation fits into the picture. What happens when we reduce the time and physical effort spent on everyday tasks? How can innovations such as The Divya Manual Washing Machine complement existing work across WASH, education, health, gender, livelihoods and humanitarian programming?

​We’ll be joined by additional perspectives from GOPA Meta Meta and Colectivo Tomate, bringing experience from across development, community engagement and innovation into the conversation.

​Find out more about The Washing Machine Project and Global Learning for Sustainability (GLS).

​Who is it for?
Anyone working across WASH, education, health, gender, livelihoods, women’s empowerment or humanitarian programming who wants to explore how unpaid care connects with the work they already do.