The First Five Years Matter: What It Takes to Make ECD a Public Priority
The foundations for learning, health, relationships, and development are built long before a child enters primary school.
Yet early childhood development and education remain underprioritized and underfunded in many countries. Families struggle to access quality care and learning, services are often fragmented across health, education, nutrition, and social protection, and children with disabilities can be excluded from the very beginning.
What would it take to make the first five years a genuine public priority?
Quality early childhood development requires more than expanding access to preschool. It means building systems around the whole child: supporting early learning alongside health, nutrition, responsive caregiving, inclusion, and protection. It also means designing those systems for the realities families increasingly face, including poverty, displacement, extreme weather, and other climate-related shocks.
This session will explore what is working in early childhood development and what governments, funders, practitioners, and communities can learn from emerging models, including experience from across Africa. Particular attention will be given to disability inclusion: how can ECD systems be designed from the outset so that children with disabilities and their families are fully included rather than accommodated later?
The conversation will ultimately ask what needs to change in priorities, financing, and public systems to make quality early childhood development available to every child.
Discussion Group Leaders
- Maria Omare is Founder and Executive Director at The Action Foundation, advancing disability inclusion and opportunities for children and young people with disabilities across Kenya and Africa.
- Pedro Castillo is Director of Social Investment at Promotora Social México, advancing strategic social investment that supports sustainable and inclusive development.
- Stephen Ikonya is Director of Programs at The Action Foundation, advancing disability-inclusive health, education, and systems change for children and young people.
- Cindy Lithimbi is Senior Manager at Global Development Incubator, strengthening childcare and early childhood development systems through strategy, policy, partnerships, and locally rooted solutions.
What to Expect
A practical conversation about what it takes to build stronger and more inclusive early childhood systems.
Participants will draw on evidence and experience from ECD practitioners, researchers, governments, and locally led organizations to examine what is working and where persistent gaps remain.
The discussion will connect early learning with disability inclusion, health, nutrition, caregiving, climate resilience, and financing, while keeping the central focus on building systems that give every child a strong start.
Who This Is For
This session is for governments, early childhood practitioners, funders, researchers, disability inclusion organizations, education and health leaders, child development organizations, and others working to improve outcomes for young children and their families.
What You Will Get Out of It
- A clearer understanding of why the first five years are foundational to lifelong learning and development
- Lessons from promising approaches to early childhood development and education
- Practical approaches to building disability inclusion into ECD from the start
- Perspectives on making early childhood systems more resilient to climate shocks and disruption
- Ideas for increasing the priority and financing given to quality early childhood development.