About the Event
BIGD and Prothom Alo jointly hosted the roundtable discussion at the Prothom Alo office in Karwan Bazar, Dhaka. The event was organized under the Catalyzing Whole Child Development in Bangladesh project (2022–2026), through which five development and academic institutions have worked together to institutionalize whole child development nationally. The roundtable followed a series of three regional outreach and dialouge workshops, which were convened to contribute to a shared understanding of the evidence and lessons emerging from Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) initiatives and generate practical recommendations for strengthening coordination, government ownership, and the integration of Whole Child Development (WCD) within Bangladesh’s ECCD system.
Read the full-page coverage in Prothom Alo: শিশুর প্রারম্ভিক বিকাশ নিশ্চিত করতে হবে
Key Takeaways
The speakers emphasized the challenges of coordination. With nineteen ministries currently engaged in early childhood work, several speakers argued that fragmented oversight was limiting the reach and durability of existing initiatives, and called instead for a leaner coordinating body with genuine authority, a dedicated budget, and a shared results framework that all stakeholders could work toward together.
Much of the conversation centred on Bangladesh’s existing service infrastructure, particularly its network of over fourteen thousand community clinics. Speakers saw these clinics as an underused platform for delivering child development support at scale, and proposed evolving them into integrated community health and wellness centres, with brief, regular child-development sessions folded into health workers’ existing responsibilities rather than treated as an added burden.
A recurring concern expressed by speakers was the question of continuity. Speakers observed that progress made under one administration or one set of officials often stalls when leadership changes, and argued that gains need to be documented and absorbed into government structures themselves, rather than remaining dependent on individual project champions or time-bound projects. Development partners echoed this sentiment, calling for research and monitoring data to be co-created with the government from the outset and aligned with existing government information systems, so that findings feed directly into policy rather than running parallel to it.
Finally, speakers pointed to concrete gaps still holding the system back: the absence of a national ECD database, uneven budget distribution across the ministries involved, and the risk that children with disabilities are left out of mainstream services unless access is deliberately built into program design.
Speakers at the Roundtable
- Md. Abdur Rahim, Additional Director General, Directorate of Primary Education, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education
- Mohammad Nasir Uddin, Deputy Secretary, Community Clinic Health Support Trust, Health Services Division
- Mehnaz Rabbani, Director, Operations, Strategy, and Partnership, BIGD
- Jena Derakhshani Hamadani, Emeritus Scientist, icddr,b
- Esha Husain, Country Lead, Synergos Bangladesh
- Syeda Sajia Zaman, Program Head, BRAC Institute of Educational Development
- Md. Moazzem Hossain, Program Head, BRAC Education Programme
- Shaila Ahmed, Assistant Professor & Research Fellow, BIGD
- Ahlam Ahsan, CEO, Phulki NGO and Phulki Ltd.
- Farah Muneer, Senior Research Coordinator, BIGD
- Mostanzida Alnoor, Education Specialist, UNICEF
- Saidur Rahman Mashreky, Professor, Department of Public Health, North South University
- Dr. Kamran Ul Baset, Dean & Associate Professor, School of Pharmacy and Public Health, Independent University Bangladesh
- Rizwan Khan, Senior Program Manager, Synergos Bangladesh
- Tanzina Dina, Consultant, Social Policy, World Bank
- Anne Drong, National Project Coordinator, International Labour Organization
- Ahsan Mahmud, Advisor, Early Childhood Development and Inclusive Quality Education Programme, Plan International Bangladesh
- Foysal Hossain, Early Childhood Development Focal and Project Manager, Center for Disability in Development
- Mir Masrur Jaman, Executive Director, Somosti Media Communication and Development Foundation
- James Ward Khakshi, Senior Research Coordinator, BIGD
- Firoz Chowdhury, Assistant Editor, Prothom Alo
