The program aims to promote the young children and caregiver-centric approach across Indian cities of all sizes. Any city with a population greater than 1 lakh can join the Nurturing Neighbourhoods Network.

Cities will get light-touch remote technical support till December 2026 from WRI India, supported by VLF, to develop proposals and implement projects related to development of streets, public spaces, parks and gardens, playgrounds, etc. which would contribute towards enhancing quality of life of 0 to 5-year-old children in the city. Key Government officials involved in the project will also receive capacity building, which includes peer-to-peer learning workshops, interaction with experts, access to Urban95 resource kit and study tours.

Mainstreaming an early childhood and caregiver centric approach in cities requires collective effort. It is there crucial that multi-sectoral agencies and partners work together towards achieving this goal. Any agency that can help support in training officials and frontline workers, working with communities, supporting on-ground activation of public spaces and city-wide awareness campaigns can connect to us on team.nurturingneighbourhoods@gmail.com to explore the possibilities for the same.

Most projects will fall under the broad categories of public space, mobility, and neighbourhood planning.  

Within the domain of public space, cities are encouraged to consider projects involving open spaces (e.g. parks, playgrounds, etc.); blue and green spaces and corridors; public spaces around early childhood services (e.g. Anganwadis, nurseries and preschools, child and maternity hospitals, creches, etc.); public spaces around sites of informal employment where children are typically present (e.g. construction sites, markets, etc.); and residual/inactive spaces that may be transformed to enhance the quality of life of young children and their caregivers.  

Mobility projects might involve creating child-friendly streets, footpaths, and intersections; routes connecting child-safety priority zones; improving design of transport modes and operations (e.g. alignment of routing, fare structures, etc.); and improving “interfaces” with transport to better meet the needs of families (e.g. bus queue shelters, ticket offices, amenities, etc.) Projects might also involve child-oriented programming and temporal activities (e.g. Raahgiri, play streets, etc.). 

To identify potential sites for project implementation, cities are urged to focus on neighbourhoods and adopt a data-oriented approach to understand where infants, toddlers and caregivers are already present in the city, and where there is high utilization of a space/street/service by these groups. Projects might also involve targeting spaces/streets/services that are designed with these groups in mind or have high potential to address their needs but have been underutilized on account of barriers that can be mitigated through an intervention. Additionally, cities may look at areas with vulnerable population (e.g. in and around slums, informal settlements). 

Please write to us at team.nurturingneighbourhoods@gmail.com to know more.

No, there is no funding allocated towards project implementation through the Nurturing Neighbourhoods 2.0 program. The program enables non-financial technical support towards capacity building, training, data-collection, documentation and dissemination of these projects in cities.