Documenting Child Care

Good work in India: children in the Shankarbwan center play musical chairs. Sarah Gomez

After graduating from Duke, Sara Gomez '00 traveled to India as a fellow in the Sanford Institute's Hart Leadership Program. This spring, she returned to campus to present her latest work, a book of photographs and narrative writing that explores how poor, self-employed women workers in India are able to provide high-quality child care for their families and the benefits that result.

The book, Together We Do Good Work: SEWA's Child Care Program in Gujarat, focuses on the Self Employed Women's Association, an organization of poor women in India who earn a living through their own labor or small businesses. The issue depicted in the book--providing high-quality early child care so that mothers can work and families can thrive--is important not only to SEWA members, but also to families and communities around the world.

SEWA will use the publication for its own advocacy and fundraising to increase its ability to offer child care to more of its 500,000 members. By distributing the book widely to individuals, foundations, government agencies, and organizations interested in early-child-care issues, the Sanford Institute and Duke's Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) hope to highlight the "best practices" and to show the importance of early child care for the social development of children and as a way to alleviate poverty.

Together We Do Good Work was edited and produced by CDS' Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows Program.