Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection

About Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection

Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty. Public policies and social protection schemes often do not consider these workers, leaving them vulnerable to income losses and struggling to cope after an event or shock. In this monthly podcast we will discuss some of the most pressing issues related to social protection from the perspective of informal workers, including debates around the future of work, demographic changes and the informal economy, as well as social services, like child care and health that can protect informal workers’ incomes. Subscribe to the “Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection” to learn more about WIEGO’s cutting-edge research and hear from informal workers organisations about the debates, policies, successes and challenges they face in accessing and reforming social protection systems.

Publisher

Wiego

Category

government

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

11 Feb 2019

Latest episode

2 Apr 2026

Latest episodes

11 of 55 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   2 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   #47 Learnings from WIEGO Social Protection Podcast

   Today, our show reaches its final episode. So we decided to do something different to mark this date. This time around, I will be the guest and I will reflect about the learnings I have made over the past 7 years of this podcast. To have this conversation, I invited WIEGO’s Social Protection Programme Director Renata Nowak-Garmer. A brief introduction: before joining WIEGO, Renata has worked for twenty years at the United Nations Development Programme, serving in more than 20 countries. In this “making-off” episode, we talked about how the podcast came about, the process, learnings and the main outcomes of the show, in particular, about its latest phase, the Systems’ Mapping.

2. 

   24 Oct 2025TRANSCRIPT

   #46 Expanding social security delivery to informal workers

   In this episode, we conclude the building block of delivery and provision of social protection from our social protection solar system. After discussing the role of informal workers’ organizations in the delivery of childcare and healthcare, in this third and final episode of the series, we will talk about the role of informal workers organizations in the delivery of social security benefit for workers in the informal economy. In Costa Rica, an innovative approach to social security has been implemented over the years by the national government to include rural workers and, more recently, informal urban workers. In this policy, grassroots workers’ organizations play a key role not only in the last mile delivery, but in several stages of the delivery chain. To learn more how Collective Social Insurance Agreements work in Costa Rica, their challenges and potential for expansion and replication, I talked to Fabio Durán. Fabio is an economist and served as Head of the Public Finance, Actuarial and Statistics Unit at ILO’s Social Protection Department in Geneva, and has just retired as the ILO’s senior specialist in Social Protection and Economic Development for Central America and Mexico, in their office in Costa Rica. Learn more: *ILO Social Protection in Action Brief (2022). “Costa Rica: Extending mandatory contributory coverage to self-employed workers” https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/Media.action;jsessionid=f0DRZHXKIdUdf6eojX2c2lHKIAjQ_ly9Vx3-0XTMVPqdPICPNIgp!1393577045?id=19457#:~:text=These%20agreements%20are%20signed%20by,and%20medium%2D%20scale%20farmers%CA%BC%20organizations *ILO Report (2013) – “Innovations in extending social insurance coverage to independent workers” https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/gess/RessourcePDF.action?ressource.ressourceId=42119

3. 

   12 Aug 2025TRANSCRIPT

   #45 Workers-led delivery of Healthcare and Social Protection

   In this episode, we resume the building block of our social protection solar system on the topic of delivery and provision of social protection. In this second episode of the series, we will turn to India, to understand how informal workers organizations can play an important role to improve access to their members by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or benefits. The Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA, set up in India their so-called Shakti Kendras, or SSKs. I talked to Susan Thomas, the National Coordinator of Health and Childcare programmes at the Lok Swas-thya SEWA Trust (LSST), to learn more about this worker-led initiative. Susan explained how the Shakti Kendras operates, how they help informal workers to access social protection in India, how digital tools are being integrated in their work, as well as the next steps of the Shakti Kendras. *** Learn more: -BLOG: Bridges to Better Lives: SEWA’s Community Health Workers (October 05, 2019), by Annie Devenish, Laura Alfers https://www.wiego.org/blog/bridges-better-lives-sewas-community-health-workers/ -We are the bridge’: an implementation research study of SEWA Shakti Kendras to improve community engagement in publicly funded health insurance in Gujarat, India (2022), by Susan Thomas, Sharmada Sivaram, Zubin Shroff, Ajay Mahal, Sapna Desai https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/Suppl_6/e008888 -BLOG: In India, One-stop Shops Increase Access to Healthcare, Nutrition and Social Security Services for Working Poor (May 15, 2017), by Laura Alfers https://www.wiego.org/blog/india-one-stop-shops-increase-access-healthcare-nutrition-and-social-security-services-working/ *Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons)

Inside a recent episode

#47 Learnings from WIEGO Social Protection Podcast

Published 2 Apr 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] In the mandatory reading of the executive e -learning on patience, policy and management course, this course was attended by over 80 participants, mostly policymakers from 26 countries. So on many occasions, some of the podcast episodes were featured in digest disseminated by the World Bank newsletters from the Global Coalition of Social Protection Floors, incited in 2021 in a space research network publication as a key resource. So these very concrete outcomes showed that the Rigo podcast was indeed reaching the key actors that we wanted to influence and expose to the Informal Workers' perspectives. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 39 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

81

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