Mobile Creches
Mobile Creches provides free creche and daycare centres for the children of day labourers in India. In these centres, children under 6 receive nutritious meals, basic health check-ups and age-appropriate quality early learning. Mobile Creches runs nearly 350 such centres itself and works with social franchising partners as well as five state governments to scale its approach.
mobilecreches.org | Partner since 2024
Challenge
In India, 86 million children under the age of 6 grow up in poor working families. These children are cared for by neighbours or siblings, brought to hazardous workplaces such as construction sites, waste-picking sites and informal factories, or left unattended at home. They face high safety and health risks, malnutrition and a lack of stimulation during the most critical period for their development.
Response
Mobile Creches has developed a cost-effective creche/daycare model for children under 6 from marginalised communities. Under its model, children can attend daycare centres at no cost to their parents for eight hours per day, six days per week. In the centres, children receive nutritious meals as well as age-appropriate stimulation in a safe and secure environment. Their health and nutrition status is tracked regularly to ensure that no child falls behind.
Mobile Creches operates its model in three different ways:
- Direct service: the creches and daycare centres are fully run by Mobile Creches staff
- Social franchising: the daycare centres are run on Mobile Creches' model by other non-profits trained by Mobile Creches
- Government-run, with Mobile Creches providing technical assistance in areas such as standards and procedures, and trainer training.
Currently, Mobile Creches operates close to 350 centres directly, serving over 15,000 children. It reaches an additional 74,000 children through more than 4,400 centres run by social franchising partners and state governments.
Key numbers
