Initiative to Unlock Financing for Young Children
We are leveraging our platform to influence global agendas, campaigns, convenings, and commitments so that financing for young children and their caregivers is adequate, efficient, and equitable. This work builds on the Act for Early Years campaign, complements upcoming reports, and supports the pledging process ahead of the International Finance Summit for Early Childhood in 2027.
Why it Matters
Across all sectors, early childhood development (ECD) remains one of the most strategic and cost-effective investments, delivering immediate and long-term economic and social returns. The early years form the foundation for lifelong health, learning, and well-being, yet financing for ECD remains inadequate, inequitable, inefficient, and fragmented. Low- and middle-income countries allocate less than 2% of education budgets to pre-primary education and care, despite decades of evidence showing that high-quality ECD investments generate strong returns for children, families, communities, and economies.
Although global frameworks such as SDG 4.2 and the Nurturing Care Framework have built momentum and elevated political commitment, financing arrangements remain fragile. Services for young children are spread across sectors, delivered through multiple platforms, and financed by a patchwork of domestic budgets, household spending, and external support. The result is uneven coverage, short planning horizons, and limited protection for essential operating costs.
Problems in Financing ECD Services
Without addressing these issues, countries continue to face fragmented programs, stop–start funding, persistent inequities, and difficulty convincing ministries of finance that investing in the early years is an effective use of scarce resources for individual and societal progress.
These gaps carry substantial economic costs. Every dollar not invested in early childhood represents an estimated loss of $8–19 in future returns. UNESCO estimates that failing to increase investment will cost the global economy over US$20 trillion by 2030—vastly outweighing the relatively modest investment required now. Providing one year of early childhood care and education for all children would cost less than 0.15% of GDP in most countries.
In a world where human capital drives economic competitiveness, investing in the early years is one of the smartest and most urgent choices governments can make.
Major Contributions to the Field
Through this initiative, ECDAN is working with governments, partners, advocates, and financing experts to move early childhood financing from evidence and commitment into practical action. The initiative combines technical guidance, country engagement, global advocacy, and partner convening to help countries identify feasible financing pathways and strengthen sustained investment in young children and their caregivers.
In January 2025, ECDAN established the Early Years Financing Technical Working Group, which brings together leaders and experts across the field. The working group meets monthly to assess the current ECD financing landscape, identify gaps and opportunities, and recommend innovative, sustainable reforms that can strengthen multisectoral programs for young children. Its work also advances understanding of diverse financing models and improves tracking of investments beyond pre-primary education budgets.
The working group collaborated to develop the agenda for Investing in the Early Years: A Global Technical Financing Forum and create the Financing Toolbox for the Early Years. Click the tabs above to learn more about each.
Government representatives from sectoral ministries and ministries of finance joined philanthropists, program implementers, finance experts, and advocates from countries across five continents in Kigali for Investing in the Early Years: A Global Technical Financing Forum. Held May 6-8, the three-day Forum included presentations and workshop sessions led by global leaders and experts committed to advancing sustainable financing for ECD.
The Forum came at a time when the case for early investment is clear, but financing remains fragmented and insufficient. The Forum involved 238 participants from 39 countries across six continents, and 17 governments represented from Africa and Asia. The Forum provided a platform for joint strategy development and generated practical recommendations for how public financial management systems and financing instruments can support comprehensive, whole-child services.
The Forum achieved several expected outcomes:
- Influence global processes: Inputs provided to UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report and the Act for Early Years campaign.
- Document and learn about innovative financing models and solutions: Country case studies and research on innovative financing strategies and mechanisms were shared.
- Launch a Financing Toolbox for the Early Years: Toolbox introduced, interest built, and feedback received to clarify its scope, contents, and use cases.
- Set a post-Forum action agenda: Priorities and actions agreed upon to take forward at the national, regional, and global levels to advance coordinated equitable financing for the early years and contribute to the Act for Early Years campaign.
Read the Financing Forum Report to learn more. You can also watch and share the Forum’s highlight video which contains key messages.
In response to the financing challenges it uncovered, the Technical Working Group developed a Financing Toolbox for the Early Years. The Toolbox is designed as a practical decision-support framework that assists governments and partners to identify, assess and prioritize financing options for scaling sustainable ECD services.
The Toolbox was developed through an extensive review of international evidence and existing financing approaches and has been structured to guide users through a systematic decision-making process rather than simply presenting a catalogue of financing instruments.
At its core, the Toolbox helps answer a critical question: how can specific ECD services be financed in ways that are feasible, value-for-money conscious, and scalable? It does so through modules that help users map services, diagnose financing gaps, identify suitable financing instruments, and sequence reforms. A key feature of the Toolbox is its collaborative approach: applying the tools requires engagement from ministries of finance, line ministries, practitioners, and partners to ensure alignment with policy priorities and real-world systems. The Toolbox strengthens coordination, reduces fragmentation, and enhances government ownership of financing pathways.
The Toolbox is a co-created public good developed with partners and designed for continued refinement through country application and partner engagement. The Government of Rwanda convened local stakeholders for a two-day workshop hosted by the National Child Development Agency the week before the Forum, where ECDAN introduced the Toolbox and supported its application in the Rwandan context. During the Forum, participants were invited to help test, refine, scale, and improve the tool, including through future digitization and usability enhancements.
Read the Financing Forum Report and watch the Financing Town Hall from June 10, 2026 to learn more.
Participant feedback from the Financing Forum
Other Key Achievements
- Elevated financing for the early years at joint events with Theirworld at the UN General Assembly and World Bank Spring Meetings in 2024, 2025, and 2026.
- Supported the establishment of the Innovative Financing Learning Group, coordinated by the Education Finance Network in 2025 with approximately 30 participants. The group to increased awareness and understanding of innovative financing and to shared promising practices across approaches including blended finance, outcome-based finance, and designing for equity. The work culminated in the publication of three blog posts to share lessons learned with a broader audience.
- Contributed to the Global Costing Task Force Steering group led by Brookings Institution that started in 2025 to advise The Global Costing Task Force on how to improve the way cost data is collected, shared, and used to fund education and ECCE programs more fairly and efficiently.
- Contributed to a milestone whereby the G20 Leaders Meeting in November resulted in the Leaders’ Declaration that explicitly mentioned ECCE as a “vital investment for a country’s social and economic future” in November 2025.
- Published an ECD Financing thematic page on the Knowledge Gateway to highlight the issue and make access to new resources, data, research, and guidance easy for stakeholders to find.
- Published and disseminated a financing advocacy resource and database of financing case studies created by Knowledge Fellows in 2025, featuring promising practices across country contexts and recommended actions for policymakers at national levels.
- Convened a Climate Financing Task Force in 2026 to explore how climate financing mechanisms can be used to fund early childhood services as a climate resilience strategy, building on the recommendations outlined in the publication disseminated in 2025 on the same topic.
- Updated the Cost of Inaction tool in 2025 with the latest cost data to support advocacy efforts to increase financing for the early years.
- Held four financing town hall sessions in 2026 and multiple consultations on modules for the Financing Toolbox to inform the design of both the Forum and the Toolbox.
Future Plans
Together, these achievements have helped build the evidence base, partnerships, and advocacy momentum needed to advance more sustainable financing for the early years. The next phase of the initiative will focus on converting that momentum into practical country applications and stronger financing decisions.
We have provided input into the UNESCO/UNICEF global monitoring report focused on financing and will help disseminate it upon its release toward the end of 2026. We will also continue to support Theirworld and the regional ECD networks as they hold pledging workshops for countries in advance of the International Finance Summit for Early Childhood.
ECDAN calls on partners to help take the Financing Toolbox for the Early Years into its next phase: moving from a robust technical framework to structured country applications that strengthen real financing decisions at different levels. Different stakeholders can play complementary roles in this next phase.
Contact us to get involved with our financing work.
