Our Work

the challenge
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A staggering 250 million children globally miss out on early childhood development, the majority of whom live in rural communities in the Global South.

Access: In many countries, pre-primary remains out of reach for large numbers of young children - especially in rural and remote areas.
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‍Quality: In countries where pre-primary exists, investments are not yet delivering on their promise: classroom practice often remains dominated by rote teaching, limiting children’s learning and development and weakening the foundations they need to succeed in school.
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‍Parental engagement: While governments recognise that parents play a central role in young children’s care, development, and learning, they often lack a clear vision for how to reach and support parents at scale.
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Many parents struggle to provide nurturing care and learning opportunities at home, wrongly believing they lack the resources or skills to do so or underestimating the importance of the early years. This is compounded by a dearth of targeted information and support, particularly in low-literacy and rural settings.

A study conducted with over 2,500 parents in rural Ghana found only 13% of parents had conducted any form of play or stimulating activity with their child in the past 3 days.

OUR SOLUTION

Activate parents. Strengthen early childhood development.

Every government needs their young children to thrive. This means that every child needs to experience nurturing care and play-based learning every day, starting at home and in pre-primary settings where they exist.

Lively Minds supports governments to achieve this at scale by leveraging the systems they already have.

We work in partnership with governments to adapt our proven, practical ECD solutions to fit into their context, resources, and priorities. This can range from providing light-touch ideas governments can adopt and deliver themselves to long-term projects where we support governments to scale comprehensive models.

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get in touch

Examples of our solutions

Parent-run Play Groups

Mothers are trained by community trainers to run free educational play groups for the children in their communities. These can take place in and strengthen kindergartens where these exist or bridge the gap where there is no formal pre-primary. They improve children’s learning, hygiene, and socio-emotional skills as well as boost empowerment and wellbeing of the mothers.

Group parenting course

Community trainers provide regular workshops to parents in their community using scripted lesson plans. These teach fun activities proven to strengthen whole-child development and can be easily incorporated into household routines for no cost.

Radio for parents

Government staff are trained to broadcast radio episodes for parents using scripted lesson plans. These provide parents with practical information and ideas proven to improve the nurturing care and learning they give their children, as well as improve their own confidence and wellbeing. This is a great solution for governments without pre-primary or with limited training and supervision systems.

Play-based teaching & materials

Pre-primary teachers are trained to understand the value of play-based, child-centred learning. They are given practical guidance on making and using simple learning resources and on applying play-based approaches effectively in large classes.

Through innovation, scale and partnership, it is transforming the lives of the most deprived families in the nation. By supporting parents to provide quality education and care for their children, we are not only strengthening families and communities but also laying the foundation for a brighter future for our country

National ECE Director, Ghana Education Service, Madam Adisa Tassa

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