Almost every child in Brazil between the ages of four and 17 has access to an education. But when it comes to infants and toddlers, just one third spend time in a nursery.
Public daycare is free, but the long waiting lists and scarcity of centres outside city hubs have prevented nearly two million children from enrolling. A group of women known as ‘community mothers’ has instead begun operating their own daycares in their homes.
The lack of resources and regulation is a severe challenge for these women, but 27-year-old entrepreneur Elisa Mansur has made it her mission to help. Mopi, her start-up that won the 2018 World Bank Youth Summit project competition, is standardising the informal daycare system from the ground up.
By providing community mothers with training, organisation, daily schedules and a rating system, Mansur is not only creating proper practices for early childhood education: she’s also building a brand new Brazilian job market.
