At the Ak-Dil kindergarten in Naryn, Kyrgyz Republic, the Aga Khan Foundation provides teachers with training in the Science of ECD.
AKDN / Christopher Wilton-Steer
At the Ak-Dil kindergarten in Naryn, Kyrgyz Republic, the Aga Khan Foundation provides teachers with …
AKDN / Christopher Wilton-Steer
Early Childhood Development
In 2025, AKF’s early childhood development interventions reached nearly 2.3 million children
The Aga Khan Foundation supports early childhood development by strengthening families, improving access to quality care and education, and influencing systems to deliver better outcomes for young children. In 2025, AKF’s early childhood programmes benefitted nearly 2.3 million children and trained nearly 68,000 early childhood educators.
The brain develops faster in the first five years than at any later stage, yet an estimated 250 million children under five in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their potential because of poverty, poor nutrition and a lack of stimulating care.
AKF works to ensure that girls and boys have a good start in life by influencing the environments in which they are growing up. We improve access to quality services, enhance family and community support, and strengthen human resources and institutions.
We work in Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Kenya, the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Portugal, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Uganda.
AKDN / Mansi Midha
Families and Communities
We strengthen parents' and caregivers’ knowledge and skills on holistic child development and responsive caregiving. We focus on gender-responsive parenting, fathers’ engagement, caregivers’ mental health and wellbeing, and developing contextually relevant and accessible play and learning resources for parents and caregivers.
In 2025, AKF reached almost 900,000 parents and caregivers.
Health Services
We partner with AKDN-owned and supported health institutions and facilities. We train health workers to provide holistic child development services, to develop new and adapt existing resources for health workers on holistic child development, and to create child and family friendly spaces in health facilities.
AKDN / Christopher Wilton-Steer
Pre-Primary Education and Quality Childcare Services
We facilitate the establishment of sustained learning spaces for out-of-school preschool children, train pre-primary educators on holistic child development, nurture safe and playful learning environments and develop locally rooted school readiness resources and solutions. We also support the establishment of affordable quality childcare models linked to women’s economic empowerment.
In 2025, AKF trained nearly 68,000 preschool educators and worked with nearly 39,000 early childhood centres and community spaces.
Research, Policy and Practice
We convene and contribute to local and national level policy dialogue, provide advisory services to local and national level systems and institutions, support capacity building for national-level policy makers, and share actionable evidence about ‘how' and 'what' works.
We are leading Schools2030, a global, 10-year participatory action research and learning improvement programme based in 1,000 government schools across 10 countries, including Kenya. Using the principles of human-centred design and focusing on the key transition years of ages five, 10 and 15, Schools2030 seeks to annually generate 1,000 locally-rooted education solutions that can inform and transform systems-level approaches for improving holistic learning outcomes for all learners. The initiative also includes early childhood development through a pre-primary cohort and interventions to equip young people with employable skills. Find out more