2014

Grow ECD (originally called Grow with Educare Centres) was started by Taking Care of Business as a micro-franchise accelerator pilot project thanks to funding from the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa.

Our founder, Lisa Voortman, is an early learning specialist and teacher with many years of experience in successfully running her own early childhood development centre.

We formed a strategic partnership with Grow Learning Company to help us develop a bespoke, locally relevant curriculum and classroom kit.

We partnered with our first ECD centre in Langa, Cape Town.

2015

Three more ECD centres joined our Cape Town network.

We developed our social franchise model including our Education-in-a-Box and Business-in-a-Box components for a quality, professional preschool.

2016

We opened Grow with Philippi Village Educare Centre. This was our first centre started from scratch. Centre owner, Connie Sgigaba, started with only three learners. Now she cares for 100 learners and has 7 staff members.

The team continued to grow as we added nine more centres to the social franchise programme and expanded our education and business training and mentoring.

2017

Grow expanded to Durban and formed partnerships with four centres in the first year. One of the four centres received a total upgrade thanks to the generous support of Focus on iThemba, Belgotex (The Go Group), Container World and more.

2018

We continued expanding in Cape Town and Durban and set up our Johannesburg branch.

In total, 14 new centres joined Grow ECD this year.

Grow won crucial funding from Grand Challenges Canada’s Saving Brains initiative. This helped us develop our apps and scale our model.

2019

We officially launched our first ECD centre partnerships in Johannesburg thanks to support from MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet.

We launched our first external evaluation impact report.

We piloted the use of low-cost loans.

15 ECD centres joined our network.

Tracey Chambers, co-founder of Taking Care of Business, stepped into the role of CEO full time.

2020

We launched our data-free online learning programme for teachers and centre owners.

We launched our comprehensive ECD management system and mobile apps to our network of ECD centres.

During the COVID-19 crisis, we supported our 45 centres, their learners and families with food parcels, stipends, at-home learning resources, sanititation and handwashing resources to help them reopen.

2021

We launched access to our apps for free to all ECD centres and organisations in South Africa.

We deconstructed our social franchise model to make our services and products more accessible by launching our Small Business Programme.

We signed a significant shared value partnership with Old Mutual to support our technology scaling strategy.

We officially launched low-cost ECD Finance in partnership with Spoon Money.

Our ECD Programme (curriculum) was officially accredited by the Department of Social Development.

2022

We launched our online 2-5 year old online curriculum, a data-free interactive lesson guide to support teachers nationwide, made possible thanks to The LEGO Foundation.

We offer 10 data-free online training courses on our app.

We launched our free registration support tools and guide.

Thanks to support from Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy we were able to commit to further expansion and assist for many more ECD centres.

We started many new valuable partnerships and collaborations and ended the year with 1,700 centres actively using our app and 95 centres using our Small Business Programme.

2023

We launched our ECD Business Accelerator training course.

We developed our Baby Programme.

We added 76 new ECD centres to our Small Business Programme.

3,200 ECD centres used our free app.

Grow Educare Centres rebranded to Grow ECD.

Following extensive sector engagement, we developed two valuable sector tools: A Learner Assessment and a Centre Assessment Tool.

We add another 5 data-free online training courses to our app.

2024

We opened a satellite branch in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, thanks to funding support from Humulani Trust.

Grow ECD joined the Intersectoral Forum (ISF) for ECD.

Grow ECD was selected to join the Injini Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship Program.

We launched our online Baby Curriculum.

We celebrate 10 years of growing ECD together!

Our free ECD apps now have over 5,800 active users (centre owners, teachers and parents).

200 ECD centres are part of our Small Business Programme, allowing 10,000 children benefit from our daily programme.

We have a team of 35 dedicated employees.

We celebrate 10 years of growing ECD together!

Here’s to 10 more years of growing ECD together!

“It is wonderful working with Grow because of their consistency across the programme nodes and obvious passion and intention that the programme managers show. The Grow team also leaps into action in any time of need (regardless of it being related to ECD or not), so as a neighbouring development organisation they are awesome to have in our wider team as a Power Partner. The most valuable part of partnering with Grow is that the team take full ownership and accountability for their “part” of the work in the programme. Grow aren’t afraid of doing the heavy lifting when required which makes for a productive overall working relationship with multiple partners involved.”

“Over the past decade, Grow ECD's carefully crafted work has been an important lever of change in the ECD landscape. By empowering the community-based ECD businesses and the women who run them, the trickle-down effect has been a vastly improved ECD education for the children in their care. Book Dash is proud to have partnered with Grow ECD to provide books to the centres and the children, thereby helping to put them on a path to success. Happy Birthday Grow ECD – may you go from strength to strength!

“Congratulations to Grow ECD on your 10th anniversary! Your dedication to early childhood development is truly inspiring. Your efforts to provide quality education have made a significant impact on children and the ECD sector. At Breadline Africa, we’re proud to have partnered with you, witnessing your transformative work and shared impact. Here’s to celebrating your achievements and looking forward to even greater successes. Happy 10th anniversary, Grow ECD!”