The Challenge

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

Governments and funders face three challenges: access, quality, and parental engagement.  The costs of inaction are profound: children experience developmental and health challenges, learning outcomes suffer, and education systems face higher repetition and weaker results-driving long-term costs for governments and society.
‍
‍Access: In many countries, pre-primary remains out of reach for large numbers of young children—especially in rural and remote areas.
‍
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.
‍
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.

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.