The Community Day Care Center program was created in 1991 as a strategy to alleviate poverty and to promote integrated child development among poor communities, beginning with 20 centers in the capital city. By January 1998 it had expanded to 1200 centers attended by about 10,000 children 0-7 years of age and covering all 22 departments of Guatemala. The community day care centers, or hogares comunitarios , are provided as a non-traditional alternative to ensure the care of children of working parents, in communities characterized by poverty and lack of access to alternative child care. The overall program objective is to implement a set of actions through community participation and institutional coordination to promote integrated human development of communities, with emphasis on the care of children and women. This program is one of the very few currently operating in urban Guatemala that directly targets women, and working working mothers with children under 7 years of age in particular.
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