Get quality early childhood development everywhere

We help governments deliver quality early childhood development at scale by activating the power of parents.

THE CHALLENGE

We’re in a global ECD crisis.

There’s no debate: the early childhood years are critical for a child's lifelong success and well-being. But, a staggering 250 million children globally miss out, the majority of whom live in rural & underserved communities in the Global South. Current solutions don’t offer the quality, affordability, urgency or scale needed. It’s time for a new, practical approach that gets early childhood development working effectively everywhere.

OUR big idea

Parents are the sleeping giants.

Governments can use their existing resources & systems to reach parents at massive scale, transforming them into confident & capable ECD providers.

WHAT WE DO

Improving playful learning & care

Parents often struggle to provide nurturing care and learning due to a lack of information and confidence. We bring nearly 20 years of experience designing practical, context-appropriate parenting content. This tackles mindset barriers and enables parents to embed playful learning and care into everyday life and in pre-primary settings where these exist. Critically, it is proven to improve children’s learning and development, increase mothers' empowerment and wellbeing, and create stronger family relationships at home.

Supporting governments to integrate and scale

Since 2016, we have partnered with governments to adapt and embed our content and approaches within existing systems so governments can run, fund, and sustain delivery themselves. We bring deep expertise in how to deliver effectively at scale. We find solutions that work in real-world settings and fit available systems, capacity, and resources.

EXPLORE our work

OUR IMPACT

RCT-backed impact at scale

We’ve proved that rural parents are willing and able to power multiple child development gains no matter their education or socioeconomic status.

1 extra year of school

is the equivalent learning gains generated

20% improvement

in parental knowledge of ECD practices

National adoption in Ghana

Ghana Education Service has integrated our parenting course into their pre-primary system and are now running it at zero extra cost

Reach

304,641

children attending parent-run Play Schemes each week

137,528

parents receiving parenting courses provided by government

1,8 million

parents listening to government-broadcast radio programming

See our EVIDENCE

The concept is simple and obvious, yet for a long time it has been overlooked. In many ways, we are returning to what should have been the status quo. Parents are becoming educated and beginning to understand the value and importance of learning. We are seeing a transformation — not only in children’s learning outcomes, but in parents as well. Essentially, the model uses one stone to kill two birds, and you cannot ask for anything better than that.

Ghana’s Deputy Minister for Education, Dr. Clement Apaak about the GES-Lively Minds Programme

See parent-powered ECD in action

Thanks to all donors who are supporting us or have supported us in the past few years.

For Funders

Early childhood initiatives often struggle to scale effectively and affordably, especially to last mile communities. Drawing on proven evidence and deep experience supporting government delivery, we help governments to integrate proven, parent-powered approaches into existing systems. We create clear affordable, sustainable, and government-owned pathways to population-level impact.

For Governments

Let’s work together and integrate our ready-to-implement solutions into your existing systems with minimal additional resources.

For Civil Society

Join us in co-creating and adapting parent-based ECD for new contexts and communities. Together, we can make early childhood development even more effective, with parents and play at the centre.

Partner with us