Ford announces $25 million pledge to support informal workforce

The Ford Foundation has announced a five-year, $25 million grant to support workers in the informal economy. It’s part of a push to get governments to invest more in protections for an estimated 2.1 billion informal workers around the world that the foundation said have been “devastated by the lack of social and labor protections” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ford’s grant will support the work of Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, or WIEGO, a global research, policy, and advocacy network that supports women and “the working poor.” Some of the $25 million will be given as grants to global groups representing domestic and home-based informal workers, street vendors, and waste pickers in more than 90 countries, according to a press release. WIEGO has found that those categories of workers were especially hard-hit by the pandemic. For example, a WIEGO study found that in Durban, South Africa, 97% of street vendors and 74% of waste pickers stopped working amid lockdown restrictions in April 2020. The group will release a 12-city study of the effects of COVID-19 on informal workers next month. “This grant recognizes the importance of ensuring billions of informal workers have a seat at the table to have their voices, demands, and needs heard at the national and global levels, so policymakers and business leaders recognize their contributions and value,” Sarita Gupta, director of the Ford Foundation Future of Work(ers) program, said in a statement. Gupta said in an interview with Devex that the timing of Ford’s funding announcement was important because it came ahead of the International Labour Conference, where she said worker representatives will be “lifting the voices of workers and calling on governments and business leaders to really listen.” Their conference agenda will include calling for direct representation of informal economy workers in collective bargaining spaces, as well as pushing for fair compensation and universal social protections for workers across all sectors, she said. “I’m really excited about the possibility of this moment,” Gupta told Devex. “I think the pandemic has shaken up a lot of our existing systems and forced us to ask good questions about are our existing systems and policies enough. And what we’ve heard is a loud roaring ‘No.’” According to data from the International Labour Organization, the percentage of informal workers falling into poverty was estimated to have doubled from 26% to 59% during April 2020, which is considered to be the first month of the global pandemic. Ford’s latest grant is part of a series of actions it has taken to address economic disparities that have worsened during the pandemic. The foundation announced last year that it would sell a $1 billion social bond and use the net proceeds to help nonprofits, especially those impacted by the pandemic. The $25 million grant for informal workers was pulled from the proceeds of that social bond, Gupta said. Ford also recently joined with several other foundations to launch the United States-focused Families and Workers Fund, a five-year initiative to support the economic recovery of low-paid workers and others that “have been locked out of the country’s recovery and prosperity.”