Movimento pela Infância - mopi

In Brazil, access to childcare is limited. While public daycare centers lack enough vacancies to meet the existing demand, private daycare centers are too expensive for most part of the population. With no access to quality and affordable childcare, children can't build foundational skills to succeed at school while an increasing number of low and middle income women are prevented from joining the workforce. In order to change this situation, mopi empowers women entrepreneurs to run their own home-based daycare centers. mopi offers caretakers pedagogical resources (i.e. daily educational tips) and managerial guidance (i.e. financial literacy), while connecting supply (centers) and demand (families). mopi is a scalable solution that allows parents to join the workforce resting assured that their children are not only safe but also developing their full potential in the most important age range of their lives.

In Brazil, 70% of children between zero and three years old are not enrolled in public or private daycare centers. On the one hand, public daycare centers do not have enough vacancies to supply for the existing demand. In fact, 60% of families whose children are not enrolled in any program have tried a spot in a public daycare center, but centers didn't have the capacity to take them in. If Brazil would to continue with its current pace and strategy to build new centers, it would take the country 25 years to supply for half of the demand for childcare. On the other hand, private daycare centers do exist but are too expensive for most part of the population, costing up to US$ 1,000 per child per month. Additionally, the range of time offered at daycare centers isn't flexible enough for working parents. In this scenario, parents can't join the workforce and need to stay at home to take care of their children who miss a unique opportunity for development during the most important age range of their lives.

mopi's solution directly impacts three groups of people: children in their first years of life, their parents and home-based caretakers. mopi's initial target location is in low income neighborhoods in peri-urban areas in the greater São Paulo region. The caretakers are women who already have experience taking care of children and hold an associate's or bachelor's degree in Pedagogy. They usually provide two main types of services: recurrent, when they take care of children during the entire week while the child's parents go to work, and on-demand, when parents have a social event or similar and need a place to leave their children for a couple hours. The parents live close to the caretaker's house and work during the entire day, requiring flexible childcare hours. Since the initial idea of mopi, we made sure to constantly be on the ground and co-develop the solution with the caretakers by visiting their houses, discussing the wireframes and marketing strategy. It is only by working with them that we know mopi will be able to truly support their work.

Movimento pela Infância (mopi) is a network of home-based daycare centers in Brazil. mopi's solution empowers women entrepreneurs with pedagogical and managerial resources to run their own home-based childcare centers. 

The solution is based on three main pillars: (1) development, (2) management, and (3) demand.

(1) Development: mopi equips caretakers with daily activities, tips and advices to be implemented with the children in the center. The information, delivered through messaging (WhatsApp) in text and video formats, includes materials from The Basics (https://www.thebasics.org), a toolkit with specific content for caretakers and parents. mopi also provides online and offline continuous training and play kits to caretakers in the network.

(2) Management: in order to support the caretaker in managing the home-based childcare center, mopi provides a financial dashboard with information about revenue, costs and profits in different perspectives. mopi also provides legal support so that caretakers can be formalized through the individual micro-entrepreneur framework in Brazil and get access to different social benefits. Finally, mopi facilitates the interaction and agreements between caretakers and families, including the supply of food for the children during the day at the childcare center.

(3) Demand: mopi connects families in need of childcare to caretakers in the network through a mobile-first online platform. The platform allows pre-vetted caretakers to showcase their centers with information about time, location, pictures, age range and more to interested families. The platform also enables online payment, a center rating system and recognition program for caretakers. mopi charges a transaction fee for every payment made through the platform between the caretaker and the family: 2.5% for recurrent services and 15% for on-demand services.

mopi’s solution is innovative because it leverages the sharing economy in early childhood care to build a network of community and home-based daycare centers. Brazil’s current  strategy of building new public daycare centers would take 25 years to offer only 50% of children ages zero to three a spot in public daycare centers. By empowering women entrepreneurs to deliver quality early childhood education in low and middle-income neighborhoods, we are increasing access to early childhood education at an accelerated and scalable rate. We are using current infrastructure while boosting the local economy and, making it possible for parents to reenter the job market.

mopi’s core technology is a location-based app that facilitates hiring childcare in home-based centers. For parents, it is a convenient way of connecting to trained and vetted caregivers. It provides a matching platform, online payment options, and a rating system and recognition program. For caregivers, it provides a platform to offer their services, a financial dashboard, basic legal support, and connects them to potential clients. The vetting process will be developed using a machine learning algorithm that will facilitate scalability of the vetting process. mopi will build and leverage a vast parameterized database of caretakers to effectively select applicants to join the network at scale.

Ultimately, we want to improve the executive function and school readiness of all children in Brazil. To achieve this long-term outcome we want to increase access to early childhood education by leveraging the local shared economy through a network of home-based childcare centers. If we invest in three inputs: development, management, and technology-driven demand. These inputs will help us accomplish the following activities: a vetting and training process for caregivers; a simple, comprehensive framework for promoting cognitive and social-emotional development of children aged 0-6; and a quality management process with regular visits, follow-ups, and recognition program. These activities will then produce these outputs: Improved caretaking; Guidance and orientation for women entrepreneur; and Interactive and playful learning. This will lead to our final impact outcomes. In the short term: Increase access to early childhood education and financial empowerment of parents and caregivers. In the long-term: Children’s improved executive function, school readiness and reduction of achievement gap driven by socioeconomic status and race.

Currently, we are serving one community through our pilot program. In a year, we will be serving 10 communities and in five years, we will be serving over 100 communities.

In the first year of operation, mopi will empower and develop 10 women entrepreneurs, directly impacting 50 children with high quality pedagogical resources, while improving the chances of 50 families maintaining a stable job. Within the next five years, mopi will leverage its automated vetting process to scale up and reach Brazil's five regions, impacting thousands of children nationwide. 

Barriers we will face in the next year can be categorized into three main buckets: legal, financial, and technical. The legal barrier is that home-based childcare centers are not regulated as formal educational facilities. The main financial barrier is ensuring financial sustainability for both mopi and the caregivers. The technical barrier we will face in the coming year is creating the vetting process for caregivers and matching system for parents and caregivers. 

In the next five years, the barriers will be ensuring sustainable funding streams for mopi, sustainable processes for training caregivers, ensuring quality through regular visits, and scaling the vetting process by automatizing it.

To achieve financial sustainability we’ll have B2B and B2C business models. In B2C we would charge a small percentage of the monthly fee charged by caretakers while in B2B we would allow employers to offer daycare to their employees through mopi. 

To create the vetting process we plan on developing a machine learning algorithm that will screen caregivers. For the training process, we will begin with a face-to-face training model and then migrate to an asynchronous online training model using five short modules that provide caregivers with a simple, comprehensive framework for promoting cognitive and social-emotional development of children aged 0-6.

In regards to the legal barrier, mopi is currently working closely with a women's rights activist legal firm in order to develop and implement a working framework for caretakers in the country.

mopi was co-founded through the work and passion of three master students: Angela Hernandez (Master's in Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education), Elisa Mansur (MBA, MIT Sloan and Master's in Public Administration, Harvard Kennedy School) and Maria Rodrigues (MBA, MIT Sloan). The three co-founders currently work part-time on the solution. mopi is also working with two different contractors. The first one is a legal firm specialized in women's rights that is developing the pilot of the legal framework for caretakers. The other contractor is a designer who is supporting mopi in terms of social media and other marketing materials.

mopi's three co-founders have at least one thing in common: the commitment to improve Education in Brazil. Combining the corporate years and the social impact entrepreneurial track record of both Maria and Elisa with Angela's classroom and school background in Brazil for over 15 years, we gather a set of skills and experiences which are strongly complementary, allowing us to successfully build mopi. Working with early childhood in the country we have lived in for so many years, the three of us have merged our passion for Education with a research-backed solution to promote systemic change in Brazil.

mopi has two main types of partnerships, namely for content and reach. When it comes to content, mopi is working together with The Basics (https://www.thebasics.org), a toolkit with resources for caregivers to develop daily activities with children in their home-based childcare center. On the reach side, mopi works together with local partners, such as nonprofit and multilateral organisations to expand the solution to more communities and types of settings.

mopi creates value to families of young children that need childcare at an affordable price. Our main customers are the families, which we connect to home-based caregivers nearby through our website. If a family decides to hire the services of the caregiver, mopi makes a fee. Our fee is lower (2.5%) for recurrent caregiving services, typically Monday to Friday for monthly periods, and higher (15%)for punctual services, typically a night or an afternoon. The caregivers act as our partners, we offer them training, business solutions and a marketplace. The children are our beneficiary, our whole system is designed with the child at the center. We focus on making sure that children in mopi programs are respected and have the chance to develop their full potential.

mopi is designed to operate in a fee-for-service model. Our revenue will come from fees on the caregiving services that are sold in our platform. This revenue stream is capable of financing our operations and part of our growth. To first set up our operations we will raise investment capital.

We are applying to SOLVE because we believe that truly innovative solutions are built on diverse expertise. We see SOLVE’s MIT-backed network as a unique opportunity to have access to a broad range of experts and experienced entrepreneurs. Solving the issue of access to early childhood development  will take deep expertise in various topics such as pedagogy, community engagement, algorithm design, online marketing and adult learning. Though we already count on a diverse founder team, we believe that connecting to people that solved similar hurdles before can accelerate and amplify our impact.

We believe we can benefit from expertise in technology and monitoring and evaluation. First, for mopi to gain scale and meaningfully address the issue of access to early childhood development in Brazil we will need to leverage the power of technology. Tech empowers mopi in three main ways: (1) with an automated vetting process (2) with powerful online marketing and with (3) online learning experiences for professional development of caregivers. While we would be glad to connect with partners with experience in any of these areas, we identify the vetting process as being the most challenging one. We would be especially interested in connecting with other ventures that effectively created vetting processes to harness the power of the sharing economy. Complementarily, we are also interested in learning how we can effectively measure the effect of our solution to both make sure we are in the right path for impact and attract investors and supporters for our mopi. We know that measuring outcomes in education can be very tricky, so we would be interested in connecting to researchers and entrepreneurs that were successful in measuring or monitoring results in some aspect of human development. 

Mopi is being created by a female founding team with a strong focus on supporting women. Our solution creates opportunities for women’s professional success and financial autonomy in two main ways: (a) developing women entrepreneurs and (b) building a support network for working mothers. We will equip women to create their home-based daycare centers providing them with business training and financial literacy/inclusion tools. Our service will create a support network for working mothers allowing them to stay in their jobs and grow in their careers after having children. Our main differentiators versus traditional care are our affordability and flexible hours. We plan to invest our prize resources in developing an automated vetting process that would allow mopi to select caregivers at scale reaching exponential growth. Such automation would be made possible by applying machine learning onto a parameterized database of caregivers, which we also plan to develop with prize resources.