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 2022
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 2022, our early childhood programmes benefitted over two million children from before birth to age six, and almost 44,000 ECD staff received training. We work in Afghanistan, India, Kenya, 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.
Our methods include:
- one-on-one home visits conducted by health/social workers;
- pregnant women’s groups;
- women’s savings and loan groups;
- antenatal health care visits;
- post-birth visits;
- peer-to-peer parenting group sessions; and
- community-wide information campaigns using media.
Under the Reading for Children initiative, we have published 150 books in several countries, converting them into interactive apps in Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic.
In 2022, we reached 1.3 million 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. We have created play corners in 95 health facilities, and trained and supported over 1,500 health workers across six countries. In 2022 we reached over two million children through supported health and nutrition services.
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, trains pre-primary educators on holistic child development, nurtures safe and playful learning environments and develops locally rooted school readiness resources and solutions. We also support the establishment of affordable quality childcare models linked to women’s economic empowerment.
In 2022 we trained 44,000 preschool educators, and established almost 200 ECD centres and community spaces.
Research, Policy and Practice
We convene and contributes to local and national level policy dialogue, provides advisory services to local and national level systems and institutions, supports capacity building for national-level policy makers, and shares 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