H.R.H. Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, AGFUND’s Founding President said: “If Arab childhood problems are not solved, our ambitions will remain deficient and our plans will falter. Because we will always be surprised with people that the community has to accommodate in its educational, health and other institutions”. This saying reveals AGFUND’s starting points intending to develop children.

Closely dealing with Arab child issues, and contributing to implement child-targeting projects, AGFUND gained a rich experience that enables it to monitor several aspects of child life and know deficiencies in meeting Arab child needs, particularly in early childhood. It was evident from experience and monitoring that early childhood services are only available to few children in the Arab world. Moreover, there is dire need to benefit from international experience and expertise to provide preschoolers with applied experiences, training and teaching aids that practically boost experience. Based on these facts, which require local and contemporary management, AGFUND led its initiative for Early Childhood Development with strategic partnership with UNESCO. It is the most important basic investment in the future that is implemented in 13 Arab countries so far. AGFUND adopted the creation of a research chair on Early Childhood education at the Arab Open University (AOU). Furthermore, AGFUND developed its cooperation with UNICEF by building an alliance to establish a regional center for early childhood development under the umbrella of the AOU in Egypt.

It has to be noted that in view of a big aspect of AGFUND’s philosophy in development is based on the close relation between human development opportunities and the care provided by the society to the child and woman. AGFUND strategy, since its inception in 1980, revolved around these two organically linked elements. Children and women are the two categories targeted by AGFUND in its efforts to supporting and financing the human development projects in developing communities. In the Arab world, these two categories represent 75% of population, this drove AGFUND to create two specialized entities in development of children and women, i.e. the Arab Council for Childhood and Development (ACCD) and the Center of Arab Woman for Training and Research (CAWTAR).