Kidogo - quality childcare through social franchising

Globally 350 million children lack access to quality childcare, it is a childcare crisis.

Kidogo works in Kenya’s informal settlements (slums), where nearly 60 percent of the urban population currently resides. In these settlements there are extremely limited options for accessible and affordable early childhood care. Mothers have to make a difficult decision about where to leave their children (0-5 years) when they go to work.

The decision: pull older siblings (usually adolescent girls) out of school and have them look after younger siblings, or leave the younger child in an informal daycare where an untrained caregiver provides basic supervision. These unregulated daycare centres are characterized by inadequate care, poor nutrition, and unhygienic conditions. 

As a result, children in Kenya’s informal settlements are among the unhealthiest nationwide, with nearly half (46%) suffering from stunting, limited stimulation, and various diseases, including HIV/AIDS, that prevent children’s brains from developing fully.  Ninety percent of a child’s brain develops before age 5. If a child spends those essential years in an unsafe, unhealthy environment, they enter primary school with cognitive, emotional and physical deficits. They often perform poorly and without a solid education, they resort to menial jobs as adults, and continue the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

Kidogo’s solution is an innovative social franchising model where we partner with entrepreneurial women “Mamapreneurs” to help them start or improve their own early childhood education micro-businesses. Kidogo begins with community mapping and recruiting women running informal daycares. Identified Mamapreneurs complete a 3-month accelerator, including training in Early Childhood Development and entrepreneurship. Those that meet Kidogo’s quality standards receive a retro-fit, branding and ongoing quality assurance as a franchisee. 

As children receive physical, social, and cognitive stimulation and early learning experiences, they meet their developmental milestones and enter primary school with a strong foundation. In addition, adolescent siblings who previously carried the brunt of child-rearing are able to return to school, mothers work with “peace of mind”, and Mamapreneurs earn a dignified livelihood.

Over the past 8 years, through a network of  500+ Mamapreneurs, Kidogo has become the largest early childhood education provider in Kenya reaching ~11,000 low-income children and their families every day.

• Young Children - (0-5 years) living in low-income areas who benefit from quality care and education 10-12 hours per day, 5-6 days per week for their first few years of life. If children do not receive quality care, wasting and stunting will increase and their cognitive development will be hindered permanently. Kidogo provides quality care during the essential first 1000 days of life - where over 90% of brain development happens - giving children the physical and cognitive skills to reach their potential.

• Female Entrepreneurs (caregivers) - running their own early childhood education centres who benefit from ongoing training, mentorship and support tools to grow their centres. These women - called Kidogo Mamapreneurs, own and operate a profitable business and have an increased sense of confidence and pride in their vocation. 

• Families - Families, especially mothers, are able to work stress free - knowing that their child is receiving quality care. Without quality, affordable childcare, mothers have increased absenteeism at work, higher levels of stress or will not participate in the workforce.

Kidogo’s team is described as pioneers in this space and has been invited to share thoughts with the World Bank, IFC and Melinda Gates. The team currently consists of 84 members and is 98% Kenyan: we’re a passionate, driven, agile team that spends its time in childcare centres in the heart of low-income communities. Our centralized Nairobi HQ comprises 5 departments: Franchising, Partnerships, Kidogo Way, Monitoring & Evaluation and Finance & Administration. Our Franchising team has regional coordinators for each area where Kidogo operates, with Field Officers in each community it operates in. Our team is composed of experts in early childhood development, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, facilities and business / management.

In 2021 Kidogo 10x’d its scale - which was incredible, but to ensure our capacity meets our scaling needs we need to increase efficiency. The access to the mentorship, coaching and strategic advisory would be invaluable for Kidogo to learn how to scale while maintaining quality and impact and strengthening our internal processes. At its core Kidogo is an implementing organization so the Monitoring and Evaluation Support will strengthen Kidogo’s impact measurement framework - enabling data first learning to drive impact. As well, Solve’s inter-sectoral global network - from peer organizations, to researchers, to potential funders will enable us to learn, potentially collaborate and create global change in the care ecosystem.

Unlike most NGOs that operate as “projects'' or provide one-off training, Kidogo’s social franchising model ensures an ongoing relationship with our Mamapreneurs to keep quality high. We combine elements of business principles with a strong community-based approach while focussing on children, adolescent girl siblings, mothers and female entrepreneurs. We also shake up the status quo through our play-based methodologies that disrupt traditional ideas of rote memorization learning and the need to discipline through caning. 

And in a sector where providers are seen as second class workers, we build the confidence of our Mamapreneurs and seek to elevate the early childhood profession through community engagement and advocacy. In these ways, we consider ourselves disrupters of the early childhood education sector.

In addition, Kidogo has been working to replicate our model in different contexts. Including with other organizations - such as a women’s bakery co-op in Rwanda who set up employer supported childcare based on Kidogo’s model. Kidogo is also working closely with the Kenyan government - in 2021 we replicated our model in government Vocational Training Centres which provides childcare to young mothers enrolled in the centres - using childcare to decrease dropouts, help young mothers perform better in school and enable young mothers & their children to reach their full potential. 

Kidogo works not only as a service provider but is a pioneering voice in the systems change sphere. We work closely with the government of Kenya on creating progressive early childhood education policies, support global partners on replicating our social franchising model, and contribute to global strategies such as the World Bank’s white paper on early childhood education and the IFC’s employer-supported early childhood education task force.

• Our overarching impact goals are to grow our network - increasing the number of children and Mamapreneurs who we serve while ensuring children are meeting development goals and stunting/wasting is decreasing.

• Over the next year our big goal is refining our model and internal processes. In 2021 we 10x’d our scale - which was incredible, but we want to ensure that as we continue to scale further that our internal processes and model is able to scale and utilize technology in an efficient way that ensures each child in our network receives quality care. 

• We have ambitious scaling plans and a big goal: 100,000 Kidogo Kids across East Africa by 2027. To accomplish this we are building our team, entering new regions and expanding partnerships including strategic partnerships with government, employers and civil society organizations. 

• Support systems change activities on a global scale to bring increased attention to the early childhood space. Including working with governments to develop early childhood education policies, sharing expertise to support innovation in the early childhood education ecosystem and collaborating with researchers, policymakers and implementers.

To assess impact our team conducts termly evaluations on growth monitoring and Ages & Stages Questionnaires to ensure children meet their developmental milestones. Every 2-3 years, an external evaluation is conducted to validate our findings. 

Key results include:

• 23% reduction in stunting and 32% reduction in wasting (in one year).

• Kidogo’s theory of change suggests that helping caregivers transform their informal daycares into quality early childhood centres that provide safe, stimulating, engaging learning experiences, allows children to meet developmental goals and reach their potential. 80% of Kidogo children meet developmental goals.

• Aga Khan study showed that Kidogo children had better development across all areas, including a 9% differential in executive function and a 44% differential in emotional regulation.

• Aga Khan study found a shift in parental perception - decision making of childcare is more towards quality drivers. Pre-Kidogo, affordability, distance from home and safety were key. However, top factors for Kidogo parents were: environment, caregiving skills, nutrition and play-based activities.

Kidogo’s theory of change suggests that helping caregivers transform their informal daycares into quality early childhood centres that provide safe, stimulating, engaging learning experiences, allows children to meet developmental goals and reach their potential.

Kidogo’s model is centered in The Kidogo Way, our proprietary approach to childcare, mapped to the Nurturing Care Framework behavioral technology, that defines the six key elements that all childcare centres within the network should embody. The Kidogo Way includes: (1) Safe, stimulating environments (2) Nurturing caregivers (3) Play-based activities (4) Health, WASH and nutrition (5) Parent & community engagement (6) Business and administration. 

As part of our parent engagement strategy we utilize SMS technology to create parent communities where parents can ask questions to our in-house ECD experts, learn caregiving tips and watch informative videos on caregiving. For our Mamapreneurs, to support developing nurturing caregivers our Mamapreneur App enables Mamapreneurs to track finances (e.g. parents paying, income), child attendance and this information is broadly shared within Kidogo to ensure decisions are data driven. 

Kidogo’s Health, WASH and nutrition approach utilizes the KoboTool technology to gather data in the field on how Kidogo’s nutrition interventions are decreasing stunting/wasting among children in Kidogo’s network. In addition, we use mapping technology to map childcare centres and have created a central database of the locations of centres we have mapped.

Kidogo’s leadership team is 75% women and 70% Kenyan. Kidogo recognizes that issues of gender inequality do not exist in a vacuum and intersect with other forms of oppression based on unequal power relations, such as ableism, racism, caste and ethnic discrimination, ageism, sexual orientation and homophobia, religious discrimination, classism, colonial history among others. Kidogo applies a diversity, equity and inclusion approach to all of our activities - from hiring to operations and actively hires and empowers folks across different tribes, ethnicities and religions.

Kidogo’s business model earns income from grants and from franchise fees. 

Currently, 90% of Kidogo’s budget comes from sustained grant funding. This money is used to find, equip and improve the quality of informal childcare operators through our 3-month training and mentorship program, fund key staff to deliver programming, expand into new regions and conduct advocacy & policy work. Our budget has been increasing by ~40% every year to fund our national scale-up and we are looking for new partners to support our work. 

We have also been actively pursuing employer-supported childcare opportunities, where we set up on-site childcare paid for by a company, to provide an alternate source of revenue. 

Outside of grants, 10% of Kidogo’s budget comes from earned revenue (franchising fees and childcare fees at Kidogo-owned Centres of Excellence). Since sustainability is key to our operations, we seek to have monthly franchisee fees ($10/month) cover the field operations of our work (i.e. Franchising Officer’s salary who provides ongoing mentorship and quality assurance). This means that if Kidogo were to never receive another grant again, although our organization would close, the childcare centres we have worked with would continue to exist and provide quality services.

Kidogo’s plan for financial sustainability includes expanding our grant pipeline, building our revenue generating activities (E.g. technical advisory, employer supported childcare), ensuring field operations are covered by earned revenue and decreasing our cost per child - so that we can scale while still providing quality care to each child in our network. 

Without a childcare subsidy it would be difficult to provide the level of quality child care that Kidogo provides. On the advocacy and systems change side, we are actively working with governments and stakeholders to advocate for child care policies - including subsidies.

Between 2018 and 2021 Kidogo decreased our cost per child from $530 to $132, our current funders have increased their financial commitments and we are working to expand our grant pipeline and are currently in due diligence with 4 potential new strategic partners. In addition, between 2020 and 2021 we doubled our revenue generating partnerships.