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
This page is also available inEarly Childhood Development
Our early childhood development (ECD) interventions reached 2.2 million children in 2024
The brain develops most rapidly in the first five years of a child’s life. Yet 250 million children are not reaching their potential during these years due to poverty, poor health and nutrition, and a lack of a responsive, stimulating environment. Worldwide, 162 million children are physically stunted, 47 million are wasted, 38 million are overweight and 175 million do not have access to pre-school.
The Aga Khan Foundation 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.
In 2023, our early childhood programmes benefitted over two million children from before birth to age six, and over 66,000 ECD staff received training. 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 2024, we reached 689,000 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 2024 we trained more than 66,000 preschool educators, and worked with almost 40,000 ECD 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