The Nurturing Neighbourhoods initiative focuses on enabling healthy and supportive environments for young children and their caregivers. The program encourages Indian cities to design or reimagine public spaces from the 95 cm (the height of an average 5-year-old) lens while also ensuring caregiver well-being. 

India accounts for nearly one fifth of the world’s annual child births and is enjoying a demographic dividend that is expected to peak around 2041. Research indicates that in the first years of life, a child’s brain makes as many as 1 million new neural connections per second. A supportive ecosystem and healthy physical environment are critical to helping our young children maximize their potential. Urban design plays a critical role in ensuring both these outcomes.

The Stories from Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge Compendium, launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) highlights success stories and key learnings from the 10 winning cities.

Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge

A first-of-its-kind program, Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge launched in 2020, hosted by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Smart Cities Mission in collaboration with Van Leer Foundation and the technical support of WRI India, helped transformed 180+ public spaces such as Anganwadis, primary health centres, parks and streets across 10 cities. By fostering partnerships with local communities, seeking convergence with existing programs, strengthening institutional capacity, and formulating conducive policies, the cities identified unique approaches towards scaling young children and caregiver friendly public spaces.

Nurturing Neighbourhoods

Going further, the new phase of the Nurturing Neighbourhoods program, aims to deepen these efforts across cities such as Kochi, Kohima, Rourkela, Jabalpur, Indore, Udaipur, Pune, Bengaluru, Warangal and in selected States. Dedicated efforts will also be taken to support an allied Network of Cities in India to adopt the young children and caregiver-centric lens in urban development through light touch support. Our vision is to enable a network of cities in India to take concrete steps in mainstreaming young children and caregiver-centric development, with a focus on vulnerable settlements.