ICANN launches cash-for-kids scheme
ICANN will hand over cash to help community members cover their childcare commitments, the organization announced yesterday.
If you show up to an ICANN public meeting with an ankle-biter under 12 years of age, ICANN will give you up to $750 to cover the cost of babysitting.
You’ll have to show receipts, and ICANN will not cover stuff like travel, lodging, tourism or other costs that parents would have during the normal course of owning a kid.
Only volunteer community members will qualify, not staffers. The full list of rules can be found here.
While the announcement may seem unusual, it does not come out of the blue. There have been a number of public calls, from a handful of single parents, for ICANN to lay on some kind of on-site childcare services over the last several years.
It isn’t doing that, however. Good grief, imagine the optics if ICANN accidentally killed a kid…
Instead, it will only give parents a list of nearby childcare providers, which it will not formally vet or recommend, and let them make their own minds up.
The program is a pilot, and will run at the next three meetings in Montreal, Cancun and Kuala Lumpur.
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Say what?
Such respectful coverage! I’m sure your readers who are parents feel quite pleased by your failure to dismiss their valid concerns! /s
I can’t tell whether you’re being sarcastic or not, but I’m not quite as opposed to this as you might imagine. Seems to me that plenty of employers lay on childcare benefits, and ICANN is in some respects an employer of the people who show up to do its policy work for it.