Building Business Champions for Children in Brazil
Practice Area: Capacity Building
Mobilizing Brazil’s Business Community for Children
Through our Center for Business Champions (CBC), Childhood Education International (CE International) led the Building Brazil Business Champions for Children initiative in partnership with Fundação Abrinq pelos Direitos da Criança (FADC), one of Brazil’s leading child advocacy organizations.
Together, we pursued an ambitious goal: to mobilize a national network of business leaders committed to advancing early childhood development as both a social imperative and an economic investment.
This project demonstrated how the private sector can serve as a powerful driver of equity and quality in early childhood — and how CE International builds institutional capacity at scale, equipping partners to sustain impact long after the formal engagement concludes.
Project Goals
High-quality early childhood development is not just a moral imperative — it’s an economic one. Research consistently shows that every dollar invested in the early years yields lasting returns for innovation, workforce readiness, and productive societies. Recognizing this, CE International and FADC joined forces to engage Brazil’s private sector as a powerful partner in strengthening opportunities for children. The project aimed to equip FADC to become a global leader in business engagement for children, ensuring that companies see early childhood investment as a strategic pillar of sustainable growth, community well-being, and national development.
Project Structure
Over six months, the Center for Business Champions guided FADC through a three-phase process of analysis, training, and implementation.
- The CBC began with a comprehensive landscape analysis, mapping opportunities, gaps, and key stakeholders for engaging Brazilian businesses in child development initiatives.
- Using those insights, CE International designed and delivered six tailored virtual training sessions for FADC staff across program management, communications, advocacy, and research. Each session provided practical tools for partnership building, stakeholder engagement, and impact measurement — featuring guest speakers, case studies, and customized resources that addressed the unique Brazilian context.
- Throughout the process, CBC experts offered ongoing strategic consulting and coaching, ensuring the training translated into actionable plans and built lasting institutional capacity.
Tailored for Success
CE International’s training course on building Brazil’s network of business champions was an invaluable experience for our staff. The comprehensive content was tailored to our situation, the designers were responsive to our input, and the speakers were engaging and informative. It has positioned us well to launch our network! We look forward to working with them in the future.
Victor Graça, Superintendent, Fundação Abrinq
Impact
The project culminated in FADC’s successful launch of its Campeões pela Infância (“Champions for Children”) business network at a high-profile event in São Paulo in November 2024. The initiative now mobilizes private-sector leaders to advocate for and invest in early childhood well-being across Brazil.
Through this collaboration, CE International’s Center for Business Champions demonstrated how businesses can be powerful allies in advancing equity and quality in early childhood development — and how CE International can build institutional capacity at scale, equipping partners to sustain impact long after the project’s conclusion. The success of this initiative reflects CE International’s growing global role in shaping cross-sector partnerships that strengthen early learning systems and improve life outcomes for young children everywhere.
