- Peru's Cuna Más program is expanding early childhood care for children under 36 months in poverty, prioritizing service quality through caregiver training and improved infrastructure .
- In 2025 alone, over 15,000 children graduated from Cuna Más free of anemia, demonstrating the program's impact when care, nutrition, and early stimulation are integrated from the earliest years.
- The initiative aims to directly benefit more than 320,000 children across 1,762 municipalities including over 65,000 children with indigenous mother tongues.
Prioritizing the quality of early childhood development services is key to strengthening the development of girls and boys from their earliest years, especially in more vulnerable households. However, ensuring that quality becomes more difficult as these services expand.
To address this challenge, with the support of the IDB, Peru is strengthening its early childhood development policy with a clear objective: ensuring that children under 36 months living in poverty receive quality care.
This requires investing in the training and support of caregivers, as well as providing infrastructure that facilitates quality interactions. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the institutional framework to improve coordination, supervision, and the information systems that allow these services to be managed and improved. This is the only way to guarantee comprehensive care that enhances child development.
In Peru, where more than four out of ten children live in poverty and only 25% reach appropriate language development in these households, improving the quality of early childhood services is a priority. In this blog post, we summarize the main components of this effort.
Peru's Cuna Más National Program (PNCM) has since 2012 supported the development of children under 36 months living in poverty across the country. It offers daytime care services at childcare centers and the family support services that provide home visits to strengthen parenting practices.
The IDB has approved a $50 million loan to comprehensively strengthen the program, with a focus on improving the quality of care.
One of the central pillars is investment in infrastructure. The project includes the construction of 25 new Comprehensive Child Care Centers (CIAI) and the renovation of the infrastructure and equipment of 28 others. This seeks to ensure adequate conditions for the provision of early childhood development services across the country. These centers provide comprehensive care for children, combining attention, early stimulation, nutrition, to support development. And they support families by giving mothers more opportunities to join the labor market.
The project also seeks to strengthen the program's governance and management by improving processes, increasing interinstitutional coordination, and expanding the use of technological tools. This helps increase the quality of services and improve decision-making.
Strengthening early childhood care services has concrete effects. Within the Cuna Más framework, progress shows encouraging results: in 2025 alone, more than 15,000 children graduated from the program's services free of anemia. This milestone reflects the importance of integrating care, nutrition, and follow-up from the earliest years of life. In addition, the services promote learning through play and stimulation, driving cognitive, social, physical, and emotional development.
The aim is to directly reach more than 320,000 children across 522 urban municipalities and 1,240 rural or remote municipalities, including 65,371 with an indigenous mother tongue. Furthermore, the project will strengthen the working conditions of PNCM staff and improve the support provided to families in the care and development of their children.
Learn more about this project here: Peru to enhance child development with IDB support.