Recognising the importance of the first six years in a child’s life and the huge gaps in provision, we provide a pragmatic, affordable solution to rapidly expand access to quality early learning. Our franchised programme is delivered through playgroups, day mothers and Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres to improve children’s readiness for learning, school performance and overall life success.

SmartStart was established in May 2015 to create universal access to early learning for three and four-year old’s. Since then, we’ve been providing an effective and affordable solution that enables unemployed women and men to run their own SmartStart programmes, and that empowers parents and communities to seek out and support this quality programme.

SmartStart’s vision is to give every child the power to succeed. This means ensuring that all South Africa’s children can benefit from early learning opportunities. To help this vision become reality, by 2025 we aim to reach one million three and four year-olds each year through the SmartStart programme.

SmartStart was established in 2015 with the aim of rapidly expanding access to quality, affordable early learning opportunities for young children in South Africa.

We help SmartStarters to set up twice-weekly playgroups for up to 12 children. We also support new and existing childminders and work with ECD centres. Whatever the setting, SmartStarters implement the same carefully structured programme that is designed to boost learning through play, talk and stories. Our social franchise model increases the likelihood of quality and impact by using standardised systems, materials and monitoring. It also enables scale, reaching many more children than would otherwise be possible and creating thousands of new jobs.