About ECDI Partner-2-Play

Play Matters: It is well proven that play is essential for optimal development in early childhood. Children learn best through play. A stimulating learning environment is essential to promote children's learning in pre-primary settings.

ECDI is a child’s rights-based not-for-profit organization with head office in Toronto, Canada. Our mandate is to promote optimal early childhood development for West African children. ECDI collaborates with governmental stakeholders and international agencies to build capacity at the most crucial time in a child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. To do this, ECDI establishes and delivers culturally appropriate teacher training programs and community enlightenment initiatives.

ECDI is the Technical Partner to UNICEF Nigeria on Early Childhood Development. Working in Nigeria, the largest country in West Africa, ECDI has in collaboration with UNICEF developed the first play-based early learning curriculum for the training of public pre-primary teachers in Nigeria.  This curriculum has been recognized as creating a paradigm shift in the implementation of pre-primary education and has been adopted as the standard in UNICEF-supported states, as well as World Bank Global Partnership for Education (GPE) funded states of Nigeria. Since 2015, close to 10,000 pre-primary teachers have been trained and approximately eighty thousand children served.

ECDI along with Ryerson University is currently undertaking a 3-year cross cultural play based learning research in Nigeria, funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC) partnership grant. ECDI is also a proud member of the Ryerson Social Ventures Zone.

ECDI continues to advance early learning strategies that promote the best outcomes for West African children.