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
Our early childhood development (ECD) interventions reached 2.3 million children in 2021
The brain develops most rapidly in the first five years of a child’s life. Yet, worldwide, 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. In developing countries, 175 million children 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 2021, our early childhood programmes benefited over two million children from before birth to age six, and almost 76,000 ECD staff received training. We work in Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Portugal, Syria, Tanzania, Tajikistan 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.
In 2021, we reached over three 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.
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.
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.