In India, one child is born almost every second….
and then?
... It's time to celebrate early childhood
to make the most of it
Think of your earliest childhood memories…
You smiled, didn’t you?
Childhood is filled with joy, wonder, excitement, and an unlimited appetite for life.
Children learn best from childhood itself. So, let’s join them in this celebration of growth and learning. It’s the ideal way to build a strong foundation for their future.
Visit the website for parents and other carers (in collaboration with 
)
)Missed Opportunity
Today, there is a lot of vulnerability and anxiety around early childhood, which can limit a child’s growth and learning journey to a severe extent.
The first eight years are a window of opportunity
Holistic development can be a lifelong advantage
An abundance of learning opportunities
Play is the way
Playground
A collection of resources, tools, articles and stories to help you celebrate childhood in real and diverse ways. Click on the categories below to explore further.
Bachpan Manao
A practical and reflective workbook for hosting 'Bachpan Baithaks'. These are convenings that bring caring adults together to think about childhood, care, play, freedom, and the worlds children grow up in. The workbook includes facilitation guidance, activities, prompts, and tools for creating meaningful dialogue in community spaces.
What does it really mean for a library to welcome every child? At The Shared Shelf, librarians and practitioners from across India came together to explore what inclusion in libraries looks like in practice through stories, accessibility, participation, and belonging. The keynote was delivered by Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta, Additional Chief Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department, Government of Karnataka, and speakers included Namita Jacob, Jatin Lalit Singh, and Raviraj Shetty.
Bachpan Manao
Bachpan Baithak: Investing in Childhood is the first issue of the Bachpan Baithak Archive, documenting reflections from a gathering of parents, educators, policymakers, funders, researchers, and practitioners at Makkala Hubba, Bengaluru’s citywide children’s festival. Through letters written to their future children in the imagined year 2050, participants reflected on what it truly means to invest in childhood—through time, care, environments, restraint, independence, and rethinking progress itself. This zine brings together those letters and the themes that emerged from them, moving the conversation beyond policy and into the everyday realities of care.
The Playbook of Play, launched by Rohini Nilekani at Makkala Hubba, brings together simple ways to make space for play in everyday life
Makkala Hubba 2026 brought together artists, educators, and communities to transform Freedom Park into a shared landscape of play, learning, and imagination. Across installations, stories, and everyday interactions, childhood unfolded at its own pace, held collectively by the city.
Collabaction
Partners can champion this social mission by raising awareness and bringing about behaviour change through projects
and programs. We call this Collabaction – collaborating for action and impact.
