Lively Minds News
When you take on government partnership work, you learn how much of it happens in the spaces between formal structures, in the quiet moments of trust, patience, and unspoken power dynamics that shape everything else. At Lively Minds, a decade of partnering with Ghana's Ministry of Education has taught us what that work really requires, including the often-invisible role funders play in shaping it and we are delighted that our CEO and Foundar Alison Naftalin, and our Head of Global Partnerships Fayudatu Yakubu share what we have learned in this interview with Nora Marketos as part of her PurposePhil series.
Lively Minds is delighted to announce the continuation of its partnership with LGT Venture Philanthropy (LGT VP), supporting our shared mission to bring quality early childhood development to underserved rural communities through scalable, parent-powered solutions delivered with governments.
This conversation explores the critical role of ECD and the importance of engaging parents as primary educators. Our Head of Programmes James Awini and OneSky share their experiences implementing programs in Ghana, Uganda, and Asia, discussing community involvement, shifting perceptions about parents' roles, and measuring success through child development outcomes, along with the role of technology and government partnerships in building sustainable ECD initiatives.
The heart of Lively Minds’ approach is that we believe that parents really are the sleeping giants of early learning, yet they are often bypassed by systems that could be harnessing their potential. We were delighted to author this blog for GPE, showing what becomes possible when governments shift from viewing parents as bystanders and instead activate them as the most powerful, cost-effective resource in the system. In addition, this was one of GPE’s top 10 performing posts of 2025!
Click Here to Read More
What makes an early childhood intervention worth backing at scale? For the Global Innovation Fund, the answer lay in a deceptively simple model with rigorous evidence behind it -and a clear pathway into government systems.
This report tells the story of why the Global Innovation Fund chose to invest in Lively Minds, and what that investment unlocked. An RCT covering 2,400 children and 2,400 caregivers showed significant gains in school readiness, with the largest improvements among children from the poorest households -achieved at low cost. GIF's support also helped Lively Minds develop the scaling strategy and government partnerships needed to turn a proven model into national policy.
Click here to read GIF’s perspective on where and how early years investment can deliver the greatest return.
Being selected as one of only twelve organisations worldwide to feature in this landmark report is a significant recognition of what Lively Minds has achieved in Ghana. Produced by Spring Impact, Instiglio, and LGT Venture Philanthropy, Scaling with Government draws on thirty in-depth interviews with government officials and nonprofit leaders to examine what it genuinely takes for an innovation to move from pilot to national policy - and Lively Minds is held up as one of the clearest examples of how it can be done.
For governments and funders who want to understand what that journey looks like in practice, this is an important read.
Click Here to read full report
The importance of play is highlighted every year on 11th June, with thousands of events held globally to celebrate the International Day of Play.
2026 was a busy day for Ghana as the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service led on a range of national events to showcase how play is now a fundamental part of their early years provision for the country’s youngest children.
Mubarik Abdul-Rahma, our Government Stakeholder and Engagement Manager represented Lively Minds on two television panels, speaking about how the Lively Minds approach activates parents to provide more play-based learning opportunities at home by showing them simple, cost-free ways to do it.
Professor Kwame Akyeampong is one of the global-leading authorities on education in low-income countries. A Professor of International Education and Development at the Open University, UK, he has spent over 30 years researching teacher education, large-scale education programmes, and learning outcomes across Africa, and co-chairs the World Bank and FCDO's Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel.
In this short clip, filmed during a visit to see the Lively Minds programme in action in his home country Ghana, Professor Akyeampong shares his reaction to what he witnessed and makes a compelling case for why investing in mothers as educators must become a central part of the drive to improve young children's learning outcomes.
As he says, 'The joy that I saw in the faces of the mothers’ and children’s engagement was truly exceptional’.
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At the ADEA Triennale 2025, Dr. Clement Apaak, Ghana's Deputy Minister for Education, made a persuasive case for the Ghana Education Service Parenting Programme - drawing on what he had witnessed first-hand while visiting the Play Scheme in his own constituency in the Upper East Region.
He described how mothers with little or no formal education were playing and learning alongside their children, and reflected on how something so simple had been ‘obvious but overlooked’ for too long. In his words, the programme achieves something remarkable: it empowers mothers as their children's first teachers while strengthening early learning and school readiness - two outcomes from one powerful model.
A persuasive case for parent-powered ECD from Dr Clement Apaak
In 2025, the BBC World Service selected Lively Minds as a featured case study for its People Fixing the World series, highlighting our work with governments to activate parents in rural communities as the first and most powerful educators of their children.
Their visit to Boufforkrum Kindergarten in Sunyani West offers important lessons for anyone serious about fixing the foundational early learning crisis - not only in Ghana, but across low- and middle-income countries.
The BBC visited the Ghana Education Service parenting workshops and playscheme to learn what it looks like when a simple, evidence-based idea is embedded into a national system and owned by communities.
Click Here to Read More about this Visit
People Fixing the World is a BBC World Service podcast that goes looking for real, practical solutions to global challenges- and asks whether they actually work. Each episode profiles innovators and community-led projects tackling everything from healthcare and disability to education and the environment.
Lively Minds were delighted to be invited to feature in the series, identified as an approach that is working at scale and improving holistic and learning outcomes for young children through government partnership and co-creation.
Click the Link below to listen to the Podcast
