Mobile Training for Domestic Workers

16 to 20% of households in Kenya have a domestic care worker that supports the home. There are an estimated two million (2,000,000) domestic care workers in Kenya - housekeepers, nannies, gardeners, cooks providing domestic care work within an employment relationship. Their care work is critical in providing support for women (who are the primary caregivers in Kenyan homes) to work and earn income and provide for their families. Domestic care work is largely informal and the workers do not receive training support to help them be more effective in their work. Employers face many challenges dealing with domestic workers including leaving without notice, poor quality of work, lack of basic skills, poor time management and harassment of children among others. The employers have expressed, however, willingness to make financial and time contributions towards training of domestic workers as long as they are provided with affordable and accessible solutions.

Our solution is leveraging mobile technology to provide accessible and affordable training for domestic care workers in Kenya. Using voice calls, SMS and USSD technology, our goal is to empower domestic care workers in Kenya with critical information and training that will ensure they are effective in their work. Our solution converts training content on areas such as childcare, cooking, housekeeping, first aid and safety into audio and text content in local languages - and delivers this as bite sized training through voice calls and sms messages. USSD technology enables us to onboard domestic care workers into the training programs and also survey them on training feedback. We are using the mobile offline channels because most domestic care workers do not have smartphones - most access the digital training using basic legacy phones (also known as “kabambe”). 

Pitch presentation; https://www.canva.com/design/D...

Our target population is divided into two segments; Domestic care workers and their Employers.

For domestic care workers, we are targeting adults between the age of 18 and 40 majority of whom have attained primary (basic) level of education. They missed the opportunity to attain higher levels due to financial difficulties, and therefore became domestic care workers. They own a mobile phone and would like professional training in domestic work. The solution addresses their needs by providing them an affordable and accessible way to access training right where they are and therefore become more effective in their work. Training also contributes to giving them more dignity in their work by empowering them with the right information.

For employers, we are targeting those who employ domestic workers. Most of the employers are women aged between 30-45 years with young families, more so, with school going children. They need domestic care workers as most of them work outside the home and need someone to mind their children and take care of the home while they are away. Employers face many challenges dealing with domestic workers, some of which can be addressed through training. This solution provides them an affordable and convenient way to continuously train their workers, right where they are in the home.

Why our team has the right people to to design and deliver this solution;

As the team lead, I have been an employer of domestic care workers for five years since I became a mother. I have experienced first hand the challenges employers face because domestic care workers in Kenya are not trained. 

We have worked closely with domestic care worker placement agencies, and developed relationships with domestic care workers who have shared their challenges and needs. 

As part of our pilot, our team has conducted training sessions for employers and domestic care workers and this is how we identified and validated the problem as well as designing and developing the right solution to address this problem at scale.

We have developed a robust mobile training solution that leverages Voice, SMS and USSD because of our experience in designing and developing mobile products for the Kenyan population through our combined work experiences in the largest Telco in Kenya, Safaricom.

Most importantly, our team believes in the vision and mission of this solution and we are committed to making it work because we know the large impact it will have in our community more so in supporting a group that has been completely left out when it comes to receiving the training and skills that will make them effective in their work and restore dignity to their work.

We are applying to Solve to receive support, coaching and access to grants that can help us move faster and succeed with this solution. Our solution is the first of it's kind in Kenya, working to create impact for a group of informal workers who have been largely ignored i.e. domestic care work. We have a great mission ahead of us and by working with Solve, we know we will receive the right support to help us overcome barriers and challenges. We also think it's important to highlight this problem and through this competition, we have the chance to let others know about this problem and support us in ensuring we successfully address it.

By leveraging mobile technology our solution is providing a new and significantly improved approach to training domestic care workers. We are making the process accessible, affordable and scalable. 

This could be catalytic because for the first time ever, it is possible for hundreds of thousands (and possibly millions) of domestic care workers in Kenya to conveniently receive and access critical training that will significantly improve their work, therefore enabling a higher quality of life for them and the homes that they serve. 

This will have a great impact on the larger community. The success of this solution in Kenya will also enable us to scale into other African countries that have similar dynamics.

One Year Impact Goal: 

• 500 domestic care workers and employers who have been trained, and have completed 2 to 6 mobile training courses.

Five Year Impact Goal: 

• 1 Million domestic care workers and employers who have been trained.

• Substantially reduce the proportion of domestic care workers who are not trained

1. Number of domestic care workers and employers who join the training courses
2. Number of domestic care workers and employers who complete the training courses
3. Percentage of domestic care workers and employers who are engaged as they go through training courses
4. Substantially reducing the number of domestic care workers who are not trained (measured by percentage)

Our mobile training solution is leveraging USSD, Voice and SMS as the core technology that powers our solution. 

USSD technology makes it easy for the carers to join the training from their cell phones by dialing a USSD code (*XXX#) and making multiple selections from a menu. This is a highly used and familiar channel in the Kenyan market used for topping up airtime and accessing other mobile services - therefore it's very familiar to all phone users. An average USSD session lasts for 3 minutes.

Voice technology enables us to incorporate audio based training. Our system originates a phone call to the carer and after they confirm they are ready, they listen to the training in a similar manner to the way they receive phone calls.

SMS technology enables the carer to receive information via sms text messages. Carers receive a certain number (3 on average) of text based lessons via sms for a defined number of days (anywhere from 10 days to 1 month) depending on the length of the training. As they receive the sms training, they are also asked questions every few days and respond with basic responses, to confirm / indicate understanding. At the end of the sms training, carers with phones that can support receiving links have the option to download an audio version of the sms course.

Our approach to developing our team intentionally works on ensuring that we have a mix of genders, personality types, work style. Our on boarding process intentionally incorporates this ethos to ensure we have a diverse and dynamic team. Three out of five on the leadership team (including the founders) are women. We are also intentional about our culture which values all team members and encourages everyone to have a voice - encouraging values that create the right environment for all such as unity and empathy.

We are serving two customer segments - we provide mobile training for the domestic care workers and their employers. Our paying customer is the employer who pays for themselves and for their domestic care worker to be trained. They pay between US$1 and US$5 per training course - the price of the course is dependent on the length of the course as well as the format (Voice plus SMS, SMS only). 

The money to fund our work will come from a combination of revenue generated by selling the services, grant funding and raising investment capital.