Based in Mexico

Hipocampus Centros de Aprendizaje

A For-profit with social mission

How This Works

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Organization Details

Hipocampus provides superior quality early childcare and education for children 1 to 6 years old, at a cost accessible to most Mexican families. It does so by leveraging modern pedagogy, technology, women and community empowerment, and corporate alliances to create self-sustaining centers. 

Support Needs

We’re looking to improve our sales strategy with:

Brand StrategyMarketingSalesStrategic Communications andStrategic Marketing

Impact Story

During the first years of a person the brain develops at a faster pace than at any other stage of life. Low-income children who are not exposed to nourishing experiences in their earliest years, for example, are 25% more likely to drop out of school, 40% more likely to become teen parents, and 60% less likely to attend college than their peers who have had adequate support from infancy. In Mexico exists 11 million of children with less than 5 years old, 56% of them live in poverty. Current public offer of childcare services is highly insufficient and pre-schools schedules are not adapted to the current reality of the communities. Additionally, 80% of children in Mexico are under the exclusive care of the mother, up to 80% earn less than 6 minimum wages and 91.4% have no access to social security.

Working mothers face the difficult decision of where to leave their young children: Alone for up to 6 hours, with a family member (usually a minor) or in a "day-care center" where negligence and abuse are common practices. Hipocampus has a simple solution: We establish and operate Learning Centers that provide superior quality early childhood care and education. To support working mothers, we partner with companies to develop solutions tailored to their needs.

Hipocampus is a social business with more than 213 own centers and 51 franchises in India working with investors and globally recognized organizations such as Acumen Fund, Unitus Seed Capital, Asian Development Bank, Ashoka, World Bank. In Mexico, we started in 2016 with our first center in Guanajuato, México in collaboration with the main actors of the early childhood ecosystem. Our Objective: 100 Centers in the next 5 years nationwide.

Access to high quality care and education will help to improve children’s academic performance, socio-economic profile of target communities, open up future opportunities and poverty reduction (reducing inequalities and social inequality, increase labor force participation, productivity and therefore economic growth.