Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Disability and Elderly Care Solutions in San Martin, East San Salvador
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Care work is part of human rights, recognized in international pacts and treaties ratified by El Salvador, which are enjoyed by all people, regardless of their situation of vulnerability or dependency. This includes the right to care, to be cared for, and to self-care. However, the distribution of care responsibilities is unbalanced and falls mainly on households and unpaid women. This overload limits their opportunities and hinders their potential for human development and their economic empowerment and autonomy.
As part of a research and development exercise, we wish to obtain field inputs for the design of products and/or services for the care of elderly and disabled people, both caregivers and people who receive this care. This will be done with residents of the district of San Martín, municipality of East San Salvador, where there is a Specialized Center for Women, directed by ISDEMU.
To do this, an ethnographic exercise (qualitative research) to understand in depth and document the demand and culture around the topic of care, seeking to identify: (1) how people understand care tasks ( 2) how they resolve their care needs (3) the costs associated with its provision, (4) the barriers and facilitators to using care services.
Subsequently, a questionnaire with filters is co-designed and a field survey is conducted with an effective sample of at least 400 people in two groups: (a) older adults and people with disabilities who require care (200), and (b) care providers (200), detailing the disaggregation by sex and age of both groups in the reports. Preliminary, the topics to be addressed are (1) needs and preferences of users , (2) health conditions and functional limitations, (3) capacities and limitations of caregivers, (4) support networks and community resources, among others.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
The National Policy on co-responsibility for Care 2022-2030 was launched, the objective of which is to
promote and encourage programs and measures that promote co-responsibility in care among various actors (family, market, State and civil society). This policy seeks to reduce the gender gap and improve quality of life, recognizing that dependency is not only a health issue, but also has important social and economic implications for those who experience it and for the people who provide care.
But state services are still on the process of getting prepared to deploy territorial services to cover the demand for care, so the The Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Government Operations and Cabinet (DCPOGG), and the Institute for Women Development (ISDEMU) requested assistance to design evidence-based products and services that can be propotyped and the scaled to other territories.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
The National Survey on Time Use in El Salvador reports that the average daily dedication to domestic tasks and care in 2017 corresponds to 21% for women, while for men it is only 10%. The Multiple Purpose Household Survey indicates that 26% of young people between 15 and 24 years old do not study or work, which corresponds to 37% for women and 14% for men. Women mainly perform care tasks. Therefore, an urgent and sustainable response from the State and a fair social reorganization of care are required, since it affects human well-being and entails high costs for the State in terms of loss of human capital, opportunities and income distribution.
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
In El Salvador, the growing demand for care services is evident through anecdotal reports and community feedback. Many families, especially in rural areas, struggle to provide adequate care for aging parents and relatives with disabilities. Social workers highlight the strain on informal caregivers, often women, who juggle caregiving with work. Local NGOs report rising requests for specialized care programs, underscoring the urgent need for structured, accessible services.
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
Through this research and development initiative, we aim to gather field insights to design innovative products and services tailored to the needs of elderly and disabled individuals, as well as their caregivers. The project will involve residents of San Martín, East San Salvador, in collaboration with the ISDEMU-directed Specialized Center for Women. By engaging local communities in R&D and prototyping, we will co-create solutions that address real-world challenges, ensuring greater impact and sustainability in care services.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
We're launching a R&D project in San Martín, East San Salvador, to co-create innovative products & services for elderly and disabled care. Partnering with The Office of the Presidential Commissioner ISDEMU’s Specialized Center, we aim to design solutions that truly meet community needs. #InclusiveCare #Innovation
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the partner:
ISDMEU
The Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Government Operations and Cabinet
Crea Consultores
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
The Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Government Operations and Cabinet: This office supports the project through strategic coordination and alignment with national policy goals, ensuring that the initiative integrates with broader government priorities for social inclusion and public welfare.
ISDEMU (Salvadoran Institute for the Development of Women): ISDEMU brings its expertise in gender equality and support for vulnerable populations, particularly women caregivers. It will facilitate community engagement and offer access to its Specialized Center for Women in San Martín.
Crea Consultores: A firm specializing in research, design, and innovation, Crea Consultores will lead the research and development efforts, providing technical expertise in prototyping and designing care solutions that are both practical and tailored to local needs.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
• About the business : type of income-generating activity you carry out, place where you carry out your income-generating activity (work place or area), time you work, average income or sales (daily, weekly and/or monthly), tools you use for income generation, training/learning linked to your business.• Care: What do you understand by care? What are the types of care that your family group requires? Who is or who is usually in charge of covering the care needs? Are there people for whom you are responsible for their care? Who are the people whose care depends on you? What ages are they? What care needs? Is there someone with some type of disability for whom you are responsible for their care? What options do you know and use to support the care task? What are the costs associated with covering the care needs?• Barriers and enablers: Do you consider that the care tasks and responsibilities have any impact on your business? Which one? What type of assistance/support do you consider key/important to have to reduce the burden of care?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Sense, Explore, Test
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
The methods proposed will provide deep insights into the care needs and behaviors of the target populations. The ethnographic exercise, including focus groups and in-depth interviews, will offer qualitative data that capture the cultural and contextual aspects of care, helping to understand how care is perceived, provided, and experienced. This will inform the creation of user personas, empathy maps, and customer journeys, essential for designing user-centered solutions.
The field survey, with a sufficiently large sample, will quantify these insights and provide data on the specific needs, challenges, and preferences of both users and caregivers. By integrating randomized survey items to do hypotheses testing, the project will experiment with different care solutions and measure their impact on elements such as accessibility, trust, and willingness to pay. This mixed-method approach ensures that the findings are robust, actionable, and tailored to the specific cultural and social context of San Martín, enabling the design of effective, scalable care solutions.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Existing data gaps include a lack of in-depth understanding of local caregiving practices, barriers to accessing care, and the cultural factors influencing care choices in El Salvador. The new data from ethnographic research and field surveys will fill these gaps, providing nuanced insights into needs, preferences, and service accessibility.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
The Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Government Operations and Cabinet (DCPOGG) and ISDEMU, are currently working on several territories to implement the new policy with field tangibles. The results from this learning cycle will drive a new phase of scaling during 2025.
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3Good health and well-being
9Industry, innovation and infrastructure
10Reduced innequalities
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