Majo Gimeno

Majo Gimeno is building a nationwide movement to tackle one of Spain’s most invisible crises: the lack of family care for vulnerable children. By creating new pathways for ordinary citizens to form meaningful, lasting bonds—from temporary emotional support to full foster care—she is transforming how society understands, participates in, and takes responsibility for childhood protection.

In Spain, more than 17,000 children currently live in institutional care, with around 1,200 of them under the age of six, growing up without the stable, loving family environment they need to heal and thrive. While some countries like the United Kingdom have managed to shift this trend—placing over 80% of children in family-based settings—others, particularly in Southern and Eastern Europe, including Spain, Portugal and Greece, continue to struggle with fragile foster systems and strong institutional legacies.

This reality is contrary to European standards and the Spanish 2015 legislative reforms that emphasize prioritizing family-based care, especially for younger children. Foster care remains an underused and misunderstood resource, often seen as too complex, too risky, or simply someone else’s responsibility. Meanwhile, society remains largely unaware of the children behind the statistics—many of them labeled “unfosterable” due to illness, trauma, or behavioral difficulties.

Majo Gimeno is breaking this cycle of invisibility and inertia by activating an unlikely ally: ordinary citizens. Through Mamás en Acción, “Mothers in Action”, she is building a growing movement—now over 4,000 trained volunteers strong—that connects everyday people with children who are hospitalized and alone, many of whom are in protective custody. These acts of care are not only emotional lifelines; they are also profound catalysts for social awakening. Volunteers begin by offering presence, but often go further: developing deep emotional bonds, recognizing the structural injustices these children face, and ultimately stepping up as foster families. Of every 1,000 trained volunteers, approximately 200 go on to foster children, especially considering most of them had never previously imagined doing so.

This civic pathway to foster care did not exist before. It reframes fostering not as a bureaucratic burden or a moral obligation, but as a natural extension of compassion and empathy. At the same time, Majo is shifting the system from above. She and her team have successfully driven legal reforms in four autonomous communities, streamlining the fostering process and ensuring that affection and emotional presence are formally recognized as essential components of child protection. Hospitals now directly activate Mamás en Acción when a child is admitted alone, and public institutions increasingly see children not as case files but as lives in need of connection and family.

By bridging care and policy, presence and reform, Majo is making society feel—and act on—a problem it had long ignored. Her model doesn’t just advocate for children’s rights—it mobilizes a broad, relational response that reclaims the collective responsibility to ensure no child grows up without love, connection, and family.

Spain is facing a child welfare crisis that remains largely invisible to the public and under-addressed by institutions. Despite a national legal framework that prioritizes family-based care, the reality on the ground tells a different story. As of 2020, approximately 73% of children coming under state protection in Spain were placed in residential care, while only 27% were assigned to foster families (Plataforma de Infancia, 2023). This disconnect between policy and practice undermines children’s rights to grow up in safe, stable, and loving environments.

Spain’s overreliance on institutionalization is not an isolated case. According to UNICEF, Europe has nearly three times the global average of children in residential care: 277 per 100,000, compared to the global average of 102 (UNICEF, 2024). The consequences are significant. Research consistently shows that institutional care—even when well-intentioned—cannot replace the developmental benefits of stable, nurturing relationships. Children raised in institutions face greater risks of emotional detachment, developmental delays, and long-term psychological challenges. The absence of consistent, individualized affection can hinder a child’s ability to form healthy attachments, regulate emotions, and succeed socially or academically. And yet, despite these known risks, many children in Spain remain institutionalized for years—sometimes from infancy through adolescence—effectively growing up without family.

This systemic failure carries a steep financial cost as well. Keeping a child in a residential care center costs the state over €4,000 per month, while foster families receive an average of just €400 per month in public support. And yet, bureaucratic complexity, lack of accessible pathways, and insufficient emotional support for families continue to make fostering appear inaccessible or intimidating to most citizens. Even in regions with high demand for family placements, the system fails to mobilize resources effectively. In the Basque Country alone, more than 1,300 children are currently awaiting foster homes who remain in institutions—despite European law prohibiting institutionalization of children that young.

At the root of this crisis lies not just a shortage of infrastructure, but a failure of visibility and imagination. Spanish society at large remains disconnected from the inner workings of the child protection system. There is limited awareness of the impact institutionalization has on children’s lives, and fostering is often perceived as something other people do—too complicated, too bureaucratic, or too emotionally difficult. As a result, vulnerable children remain absent from public narratives, and the moral and civic responsibility of ensuring their right to family becomes diffused and neglected.

Ultimately, this is not only a legal or logistical challenge—it is a crisis of values. When the state protects children’s physical safety but fails to ensure their emotional development, it compromises their future. Without transformative interventions that invite society to engage with care as a shared responsibility, thousands of children will continue to grow up without connection, love, or belonging. While Spain represents a particularly stark example, many neighboring countries share similar struggles. The path forward requires not only systemic reform but also a cultural awakening—one that reimagines child protection as a collective mandate to ensure that no child grows up alone.

Through a three-pronged strategy, Majo is shifting Spain’s child protection system from one centered on institutionalization to one rooted in care, community, and connection. What makes her approach transformational is not only what it delivers—but who it activates. Thousands of ordinary people, previously unaware or uninvolved, are now becoming caregivers, advocates, and co-creators of a child welfare system where no child grows up alone.

1. From Compassion to Commitment: A Civic Movement that Leads to Foster Care

Mamás en Acción began as a response to a painful gap: hospitalized children—especially those in protective custody—facing illness, surgery, and long hospital stays completely alone. What started as an act of solidarity has evolved into an innovative, 24/7 emotional care system embedded in pediatric hospitals, where trained volunteers provide consistent, trauma-informed companionship. In many cases, they become the only stable human presence a child has during one of the most vulnerable periods of their life.

Volunteers are carefully selected through a digital platform where over 8,000 people are currently on the waiting list to join the movement. Each candidate must pass a psychological evaluation, sign a strict code of ethics, and provide a criminal background check. Once admitted, they undergo rigorous training built around three pillars: self-care, child-centered care, and community care. This ensures that volunteers are not only emotionally prepared but also aligned with the long-term values of collective caregiving.

The model is highly structured and professional. When a child is admitted to the hospital without family support, the hospital itself activates Mamás en Acción via the platform, triggering a rapid response protocol. Coverage is organized in rotating shifts to provide support day and night, including weekends, and each child is accompanied by a maximum of six volunteers throughout their stay. This cap is deliberate: it allows the child to build safe, stable, and emotionally meaningful bonds, avoiding the fragmentation or overstimulation that can occur with excessive turnover.

This is not recreational volunteering—it is emotional caregiving rooted in dignity, affection, and trust. But what makes Mamás en Acción truly transformative is what happens next. These hospital encounters planted a seed of awareness. For many volunteers, accompanying a child through fear, silence, and recovery becomes a turning point: they begin to see institutionalized children not as distant causes, but as individuals with names, wounds, and the same need for belonging as any other child.

This proximity often transforms empathy into action. Roughly 200 out of every 1,000 trained volunteers go on to become foster families—a staggering rate in a country where fostering is rare. Through these experiences, Mamás en Acción creates a bottom-up civic pipeline to foster care, expanding what society believes possible and mobilizing citizens to step into roles they never imagined for themselves.

2. Embedding Emotional Care in Public Institutions

Majo’s end goal is the systematization of emotional care as a formal, measurable component of public healthcare and child protection. Currently operating in 52 pediatric hospitals across 11 cities from Spain—with 13 more requesting integration—Mamás en Acción follows a structured process to embed its model, known as Cariñoterapia, through institutional agreements, staff engagement, and real-time monitoring.

Rather than a compassionate intervention—it’s a clinically supported one. A 2018 impact study at Hospital La Fe in Valencia showed that Mamás en Acción volunteers helped reduce anxiety, behavioral issues, and recovery time, improving both patient outcomes and hospital efficiency. The Valencian regional government is now conducting a scientific evaluation of Cariñoterapia to develop a validated protocol for national implementation.

To sustain quality while scaling nationally, Mamás en Acción launched Líderes CURASANA, a leadership development program that trains local coordinators to oversee hospital partnerships, manage volunteer networks, and lead regional fundraising. These leaders—carefully selected and mentored—are essential to the movement’s territorial growth. Their role is not only operational but deeply strategic: they allow Mamás en Acción to open new cities, mobilize local volunteer pools, maintain training standards, and nurture future foster families.

This decentralized model ensures that the organization remains close to communities while scaling with integrity and impact. Each new territory becomes a seedbed for emotional care, civic participation, and long-term fostering pathways. By embedding emotional care locally, Majo is building an infrastructure of proximity and trust—one that is both sustainable and replicable.

In the short term, Mamás en Acción aims to be present in all pediatric reference hospitals across Spain by 2030. The long-term ambition goes further: to lay the foundation for a European initiative capable of ending child institutionalization altogether, ensuring that every child, regardless of origin or circumstance, grows up with love, connection, and family.

3. Changing Laws, Narratives, and Public Imagination

Hospital presence raises awareness—but Majo knows that systemic change requires institutional transformation. Through the campaign Ni Un Niño Sin Familia (No Child Without a Family), Mamás en Acción is challenging the cultural blind spots and bureaucratic inertia that have long normalized the institutionalization of children, especially those labeled as “unplaceable” due to trauma, illness, or disability.

Majo has become a key civic voice on child protection. In 2025, she testified before Spain’s Senate about the plight of over 1,200 children under the age of six still living in institutions—despite EU law prohibiting institutionalization of young children. Her testimony catalyzed a cross-party motion demanding greater investment in family-based solutions and full compliance with European standards. She now advises the Ministry of Social Rights and has been invited to speak at the European Parliament’s Children’s Committee.

At the regional level, Mamás en Acción has actively contributed to legislative reforms in four autonomous communities, helping to simplify placement procedures, reduce bureaucratic hurdles, and promote fostering as a primary option for children with complex needs. These changes have created faster more humane pathways for children to enter family-based care and have formally recognized the emotional needs of children as part of protection protocols.

Majo’s influence goes beyond legal reform. By combining civic energy with institutional advocacy, Mamás en Acción is reshaping public imagination: children are no longer seen as case files, but as individuals with a right to love, belonging, and continuity. What was once considered an issue for the state is becoming a shared societal mission. And the society that once looked away is now stepping forward—with open arms and open hearts.

Majo Gimeno’s journey is grounded in a deep, lived understanding of what it means to grow up surrounded by love. Born to very young parents and raised with the steady presence of her grandparents—especially a nurturing grandmother—Majo experienced firsthand the power of emotional security. That sense of care expanded beyond her own childhood when, as a teenager, her parents began fostering children with complex needs. One of them, a five-year-old boy from Kosovo, arrived through a humanitarian channel and stayed until he was well enough to return home—though he had come to see Majo’s family as his own. Soon after, the family welcomed another child and ultimately adopted both. These formative experiences profoundly shaped Majo’s understanding of childhood, family, and justice. She didn’t just believe in community-based care—she grew up living it.

Majo studied Marketing and Public Relations in Valencia. She spent two years at the University of California, San Diego, and completed a six-month exchange that broadened her sense of possibility. Professionally, she flourished: working across industries from pharmaceuticals to finance, and excelling in communication, strategy, and organizational development. Yet none of these roles ever fully aligned with her internal compass. That became undeniable when, in a senior corporate position, she discovered a series of financial irregularities. When advised to stay quiet, she chose instead to resign. That rupture, though painful, was also catalytic to finding a new purpose.

She went in search of volunteering opportunities at Hospital La Fe in Valencia, where Majo encountered a two-year-old child hospitalized with no healthcare workers by their side. Shocked that such a situation could exist in her city—and unable to accept that no organization was filling this basic need—she offered to volunteer. When the staff explained that no protocol existed for this kind of accompaniment, she didn’t file a complaint. She built a solution.

In 2013, Mamás en Acción was born. At first, Majo ran the organization in her spare time, supporting its growth while continuing her professional career. But as the initiative scaled, so did its demand and its impact. In 2021, she left the private sector behind and committed herself fully to the mission. Her entrepreneurial instincts and systems-level thinking have been instrumental in turning what began as emotional care into a structured, scalable model for systemic change.

Her leadership has earned national and international recognition: she has been awarded the Medalla de Oro de la Ciudad de Valencia and the Premio Mujer Avanzadora from Oxfam Intermón. Majo’s greatest impact, however, lies elsewhere: in the children who are no longer alone, in the thousands of citizens who have discovered their power to care, and in the movement she is building—one that reclaims the right of every child to grow up in a family, and the responsibility of society to make that possible.