Family-Friendly Workplaces: IETP Prepares the 2022 Family-Friendly Spaces Program

We are currently preparing our Family-Friendly Workplaces for this years intake. We have 17 factories and nearly 800 children participating in our 2022 Summer Family-Friendly Spaces (FFS) program. 2022 marks our 7th anniversary of the Family-Friendly Spaces program. Since its launch in 2016, we have welcomed over 3,500 children, benefitting nearly 4,000 working parents. Since childcare is one of the most common reasons workers leave their job, this program is a social initiative that has been developed based on the immediate needs of workers in the manufacturing industry. The free factory-based childcare facilities are proven to enhance children’s development, improve parenting skills, increase parental earnings & promote employment.In 2016, Family-Friendly Spaces was created to support "left-behind children" in China, whose parents migrated domestically to the cities for work, leaving them behind under the care of relatives. Today, many parents bring their children to live with them full-time, but childcare remains a concern, the spaces evolved to provide care for all children.When working parents go to work, the summer holidays are the time their children are most vulnerable to being left unsupervised. This can result in a distracted workforce with parents concerned over the safety of their children. Our Family-Friendly Spaces (FFS) support these families by providing a safe environment for children to: play, access learning opportunities, develop social skills, and spend valuable time together with their parents. Our Spaces support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG3: Good Health & Well-Being, SDG4: Quality Education, SDG5: Gender Equality, SDG10: Reduced Inequalities & SDG17: Partnerships for the Goals. We are proud to be a member of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and have developed the Family-Friendly Spaces program to deliver on identified needs as well as these guiding principals, targets & indicators.We are delighted this year, 17 factories, new and repeating, will join the Family-Friendly Spaces program; this is a welcome return to our participation levels before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the coming months, we have scheduled information sessions, on-site pre-assessment, and factory staff training to ensure staff and facilities are ready to welcome the children. Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest update of the Family-Friendly Spaces program. Developing a Family-Friendly Curriculum for the Global Manufacturing Industry Building on the successes of our existing worker well-being programs, IETP is gathering lessons learned from Family-Friendly Spaces (FFS) and Migrant Parent Training (MPT) to develop a Family-Friendly Factories Curriculum. The project aims to leverage the successes of our existing programs and Positive Parenting content to create a comprehensive curriculum of modules which can be easily adopted by other companies and industries and empower them to make influential social impacts and lasting changes within global supply chains.In addition to supporting workers fulfill their parental responsibilities, we expect the curriculum work to promote corporate culture, increase loyalty, reduce employee turnover rate, and improve workers' productivity and performance. Taking these mutually beneficial initiatives to new countries and industries.IETP is currently implementing strategies to gather the necessary information for the Family-Friendly Factories Curriculum, sign up to our newsletter to stay informed on its development. Sponsorship opportunities are available for companies who would like to make a lasting impact on the lives of parent workers and their children in the supply chain, contact us for more information.