Only a handful of programs across the world  have managed to provide for the stimulation of children between the ages of 0 to 3 at a large scale in the nations where they’ve sprung up. These include, most prominently, Early Head Start in the United States Reach Up & Learn in the West Indies, and its adaptation in as many as 13 other nations.

Early Head Start was started by the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States in 1995, with the aim of providing intensive comprehensive child development and family support services to low-income infants and toddlers and their families, and to pregnant women and their families. The program offers regular visits to the homes of infants and toddlers, developmental services at dedicated childcare centres, and assistance to the family in taking care of the child. A randomised controlled trial conducted in 2013 found that the program benefited children at the ages of 2 and 3—at the time of being offered itself—with significant impact across the domains of cognition, language, and attention. The impact of the program was found to last up to two years after its completion in some cases, with children from the program displaying better attention and approaches toward learning as well as fewer behaviour problems, as opposed to those who grew up in its absence. Over the years, the fruits borne from the program, as found in the RCT in 2013 as well, have only reaffirmed the imperative and implications of early childhood stimulation.

Reach Up & Learn was born at the University of West Indies around 1989, after an intervention in Jamaica concluded that visiting the homes of children through the ages of 9 to 24 months has a positive impact on their social, emotional, and cognitive development. The program is driven solely by home-visits, conducted by the local community members who train themselves as visitors with the help of a training manual. The visits are primarily aimed at helping the parent of the child in facilitating play-based-learning at their home. A longitudinal study concluded that the program had a significant positive impact on cognitive ability, mental health, and labour market returns for the participating children; its adaptation in 13 countries further stamping the acceptance and need for large-scale programs that provide the child with necessary stimulation in their first three years.