Kumwe Hub made its first catalytic investments in Early Child Development (ECD) centres in 2023 to improve operational and management capacity of the centres for better outcomes. Owners who grasped the opportunity saw their initiatives growing in different dimensions to parents and children expectations.
More often than not, ECD centres’ owners run their operations on passion alone. The love for the children in classrooms pushes them to show up every single day, but most have never received any structured support in managing centres as businesses or in delivering age-appropriate learning. The heart is there. The tools are not.
Kumwe Hub, part of Save the Children International in Rwanda, sought to close that gap between commitment and capability to transform purely passions into entrepreneurial mindsets.
In 2025, up to 21 ECD centre owners and 79 caregivers came together for an intensive training programme of hands-on technical assistance. Among others, participants learned the creation of learning corners that spark curiosity in the community, management of finances for the sustainability of the centres, tracking each child’s development and communication with parents about learning and progress of their children.
The results showed up fast
Every single owner who completed the programme reported an increase in confidence in running their centre. Every centre reported visible improvements in how children engage, explore, and develop. Over 1,100 additional children enrolled across all 21 centres. These are children who now walk into classrooms with learning corners, trained caregivers, and a structured daily routine that they simply did not have access to before.
One owner captured the shift perfectly: "The children are now curious. They want to know things before they sit and wait to be told. Now they go looking and are eager to know by touching."
The training, though, revealed something just as important as the progress it created. Capability and capital can only go for progress. Owners who had transformed their classrooms and grown their enrolment still could not build the extra needed rooms, purchase teaching and learning materials, and pay their caregivers’ wages. The ambition had outgrown the resources. As another owner put it: "Our centres can break records and make a real difference if we have what we need to grow. We really need to expand and reach another level."
That is the next frontier for Kumwe Hub. The technical assistance opened the door. Financing will keep it open, even wider. We are now designing financial instruments for trained ECD centre owners for the momentum built inside these classrooms can be matched by the investment these centres deserve.
Twenty-one centres proved what is possible. The question now is not whether this model works. It is how many more children we can reach when we back it with the right financing.
