Harvard University continues to lead the charge in democratizing education with Harvard Free Online Courses across computer science, artificial intelligence, and business. Whether you’re a student, professional, or lifelong learner, these courses offer Ivy League-quality knowledge at zero cost. Below is a curated list of 30 free Harvard courses available in 2025, complete with certification pathways and career benefits.
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About Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded October 28, 1636, and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Its influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Harvard was founded and authorized by the Massachusetts General Court, the governing legislature of colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony. While never formally affiliated with any denomination, Harvard trained Congregational clergy until its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized in the 18th century.
By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among the Boston elite. Following the American Civil War, under Harvard president Charles William Eliot’s long tenure from 1869 to 1909, Harvard developed multiple professional schools, which transformed it into a modern research university. In 1900, Harvard co-founded the Association of American Universities. James B. Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II, and liberalized admissions after the war.
Benefits of Harvard Free Online Courses
Cost Savings: Avoid tuition fees (up to ₹5 lakh saved vs. on-campus programs)
Skill Validation: Certificates from a top-tier university
Career Advancement: Transition into tech, AI, or leadership roles
Flexibility: Learn at your own pace with mobile access
Who Should Enroll?
Students: Supplement academics with Ivy League curricula
Professionals: Upskill for promotions or career shifts
Entrepreneurs: Master business strategy and AI tools
Lifelong Learners: Explore philosophy, law, or data science
Why do we choose Harvard Free Online Courses?
Choosing Harvard Free Online Courses offers unmatched advantages for learners worldwide. Here’s why these courses stand out and why you should consider enrolling in 2025:
1. World-Class Education from Harvard Faculty
Harvard’s free online courses are taught by distinguished professors and experts, ensuring you receive top-tier knowledge and insights from one of the world’s leading universities. This level of academic excellence is rarely accessible without significant cost or relocation.
2. Flexibility and Self-Paced Learning
These courses are designed to fit your schedule. Whether you’re a working professional, student, or managing family commitments, you can learn at your own pace, revisiting complex topics as needed. This flexibility helps you balance education with other responsibilities.
3. Accessibility Without Financial Burden
Harvard Free Online Courses remove the traditional financial barriers to elite education. Anyone with an internet connection can access these courses free of charge, making world-class learning inclusive and equitable
4. Practical, Career-Boosting Skills
The courses cover in-demand fields such as computer science, artificial intelligence, business, leadership, and data science. They equip you with hands-on skills and knowledge that employers highly value, helping you stand out in competitive job markets
5. Prestige and Resume Enhancement
Completing Harvard courses-even free ones-adds a prestigious credential to your resume and LinkedIn profile. This demonstrates your commitment to personal and professional development, a trait that recruiters and employers actively seek
Here are 30 Harvard Free Online Courses You Can Earn in 2025
1.CS50: Introduction to Computer Science
This is CS50x, Harvard University’s introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and the art of programming for majors and non-majors alike, with or without prior programming experience. An entry-level course taught by David J. Malan, CS50x teaches students how to think algorithmically and solve problems efficiently. Topics include abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development. Languages include C, Python, SQL, and JavaScript plus CSS and HTML.
Problem sets inspired by real-world domains of biology, cryptography, finance, forensics, and gaming. The on-campus version of CS50x , CS50, is Harvard’s largest course.
Course Link Click Here
2.CS50’s Web Programming with Python and JavaScript
Topics include database design, scalability, security, and user experience. Through hands-on projects, you’ll learn to write and use APIs, create interactive UIs, and leverage cloud services like GitHub and Heroku. By course’s end, you’ll emerge with knowledge and experience in principles, languages, and tools that empower you to design and deploy applications on the Internet.
Course Link Click Here
3.CS50’s Introduction to Game Development
This course picks up where CS50x leaves off, focusing on the development of 2D and 3D interactive games. Students explore the design of such childhood games as Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, and Portal in a quest to understand how video games themselves are implemented. Via lectures and hands-on projects, the course explores principles of 2D and 3D graphics, animation, sound, and collision detection using frameworks like Unity and LÖVE 2D, as well as languages like Lua and C#. By class’s end, students will have programmed several of their own games and gained a thorough understanding of the basics of game design and development.
Course Link Click Here
4.CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python
AI is transforming how we live, work, and play. By enabling new technologies like self-driving cars and recommendation systems or improving old ones like medical diagnostics and search engines, the demand for expertise in AI and machine learning is growing rapidly. This course will enable you to take the first step toward solving important real-world problems and future-proofing your career.
CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python explores the concepts and algorithms at the foundation of modern artificial intelligence, diving into the ideas that give rise to technologies like game-playing engines, handwriting recognition, and machine translation.
Through hands-on projects, students gain exposure to the theory behind graph search algorithms, classification, optimization, reinforcement learning, and other topics in artificial intelligence and machine learning as they incorporate them into their own Python programs. By course’s end, students emerge with experience in libraries for machine learning as well as knowledge of artificial intelligence principles that enable them to design intelligent systems of their own.
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5. Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles
In this introductory course, you will explore strategies for leading in a changing world where adaptive pressures will continue to challenge all of us. You will discover new ways to approach complex organizational systems and take thoughtful action on the work we all face ahead. Most importantly, you will reflect on how to move forward on the leadership challenges you care about most.
The course will be delivered via edX and connect learners around the world. By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
How to identify and unbundle complex challenges
How to understand the role of formal and informal authority
How to identify the key perspectives of stakeholders
How to build and renew trust relationships
How to approach conflict
How to implement personal strategies for surviving and thriving amidst change
Course Link Click Here
6. Technology Entrepreneurship: Lab to Market
Universities, government labs, and private companies invest billions of dollars in the research and development of breakthrough technologies that have the potential to transform industries and lives — but very few of these technologies ever leave the lab. Those that do often fail to find compelling market applications. So what determines success? How does an invention become an enduring innovation?
In this introductory course, developed in collaboration with the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard and the University of California San Diego, you’ll explore how entrepreneurs match promising technology with customer needs to launch successful new businesses. Using real-world examples, you’ll apply critical thinking to commercialize technologies, and you’ll learn about the venture creation process from founders, funders, and industry experts.
Join us to learn a systematic process for technology commercialization to bring cutting-edge innovations out of the lab and into the world.
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7. Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies
This business and management course, taught by Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna, takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and solving complex social problems. You will learn about prior attempts to address these problems, identify points of opportunity for smart entrepreneurial efforts, and propose and develop your own creative solutions.
The focus of this course is on individual agency—what can you do to address a defined problem? While we will use the lens of health to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, you will learn how both problems and solutions are inevitably of a multi-disciplinary nature, and we will draw on a range of sectors and fields of study.
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8. The Path to Happiness: What Chinese Philosophy Teaches us about the Good Life
Today, finding happiness is about mindfulness and discovering your true self. You may have heard that happiness is found by looking within. Ancient Chinese philosophy challenges all of these modern assumptions. From Confucianism to Daoism, the philosophies developed over two thousand years ago are among the most powerful in human history.
This course brings voices from the past into modern contexts to explore the path to a good life today. The philosophical concepts discussed provide tools to change your life and increase personal happiness by focusing on your actions, the power of ritual, and the importance of sensing the world around you.
Through a series of lectures, animations, discussions, and reflection diaries, this course focuses on close readings from prominent Chinese philosophers. The course requires no prior knowledge of Chinese philosophy or history and all texts are in translation.
Adapted from one of the most popular classes at Harvard, this course is now available online for the first time. Learn from award-winning professor Michael Puett and start on your path towards happiness.
The course will be delivered via edX and connect learners around the world. By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
Course Link Click Here
9. Women Making History: Ten Objects, Many Stories
As we approach the centennial of the passage of women’s suffrage in 1920, there has been a recent burst of activism among American women. Women are running for political office in record numbers. Women are organizing and taking to the streets to demand change. Women are grappling with inclusion and intersectionality.
While some of this activity may have been a response to the 2016 presidential elections, its roots lie deep in 20th-century history — a history richly preserved in Harvard’s Schlesinger Library building on the library’s 75th Anniversary Exhibit.
This course exemplifies the importance of archives in the making of history. Professors Laurel Ulrich and Jane Kamensky, along with colleagues from across Harvard University and beyond, show how women in the 20th-century United States pushed boundaries, fought for new rights, and challenged contemporary notions of what women could and should do.
Through the exploration of ten iconic objects from the Schlesinger collection, they demonstrate how women created change by embracing education, adopting new technologies, and creating innovative works of art; pushing against discrimination and stepping into new roles in public and in private.
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10. Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking
We are living in a contentious time in history. Fundamental disagreements on critical political issues make it essential to learn how to make an argument and analyze the arguments of others. This ability will help you engage in civil discourse and make effective changes in society. Even outside the political sphere, conveying a convincing message can benefit you throughout your personal, public, and professional lives.
This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing and speech. In it, you will learn to construct and defend compelling arguments, an essential skill in many settings.
We will be using selected addresses from prominent twentieth-century Americans — including Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Margaret Chase Smith, Ronald Reagan, and more — to explore and analyze rhetorical structure and style. Through this analysis, you will learn how speakers and writers persuade an audience to adopt their point of view.
Built around Harvard Professor James Engell’s on-campus course, “Elements of Rhetoric,” this course will help you analyze and apply rhetorical structure and style, appreciate the relevance of persuasive communication in your own life, and understand how to persuade and recognize when someone is trying to persuade you. You will be inspired to share your viewpoint and discover the most powerful ways to convince others to champion your cause. Join us to find your voice!
Course Link Click Here
11.PredictionX: Lost Without Longitude
Humans have been navigating for ages. As we developed the tools and techniques for determining location and planning a route, navigation grew into a practice, an art, and a science.
Navigational skill has long been tied to commercial, economic, and military success. However, the ability to predict when and where one will reach a distant destination is more than just a key to empire-building — it’s often a matter of life and death.
Using video, text, infographics, and Worldwide Telescope tours, we will explore the tools and techniques that navigators have used, with a particular focus on the importance (and difficulty) of measuring longitude. Grounded in the principles of position, direction, speed, and time, we will learn the challenges of navigating without a GPS signal. We’ll learn how the Age of Exploration and the economic forces of worldwide trade encouraged scientific progress in navigation; and how Jupiter’s moons, lunar eclipses, and clockmakers all played a part in orienting history’s navigators.
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12. Pyramids of Giza: Ancient Egyptian Art and Archaeology
Where is Giza? How were the Pyramids built? How did the cemeteries and hundreds of decorated tombs around them develop? What was Giza’s contribution to this first great age of ancient Egyptian civilization, the Old Kingdom?
The Giza Plateau and its cemeteries — including the majestic Pyramids and the Great Sphinx — are stirring examples of ancient Egyptian architecture and culture.
They provide windows into ancient Egyptian society, but also contain mysteries waiting to be solved. The Egyptian Pyramids at Giza provide an opportunity to explore the history of archaeology and to learn about some of the modern methods shaping the discipline today.
This introductory course will explore the art, archaeology, and history surrounding the Giza Pyramids. We will learn about Egyptian pharaohs and high officials of the Pyramid Age, follow in the footsteps of the great 20th-century expeditions, and discover how cutting-edge digital tools like 3D-modeling are reshaping the discipline of Egyptology.
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13. The Architectural Imagination
Architecture engages a culture’s deepest social values and expresses them in material, aesthetic form. This course will teach you how to understand architecture as both cultural expression and technical achievement.
Vivid analyses of exemplary buildings, and hands-on exercises in drawing and modeling, will bring you closer to the work of architects and historians.
The first part of the course introduces the idea of the architectural imagination. Perspective drawing and architectural typology are explored and you will be introduced to some of the challenges in writing architectural history.
Then we address technology as a component of architecture. You will discover ways that innovative technology can enable and promote new aesthetic experiences, or disrupt age-old traditions. Technological advances changed what could be built, and even what could even be thought of as architecture.
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14.Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and the 19th Century Orchestra
Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony premiered in Vienna in 1824 and continues to be one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire. The monumental symphony’s size and complexity stretch traditional instrumental forms to the breaking point, and its famous choral finale changed our view of orchestral music forever.
Harvard’s Thomas Forrest Kelly (Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music) guides learners through all four movements of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, highlighting aspects of symphonic form, describing Beethoven’s composition process, the rehearsals and premiere performance, and the work’s continued relevance today.
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15. The Einstein Revolution
Albert Einstein has become the icon of modern science. Following his scientific, cultural, philosophical, and political trajectory, this course aims to track the changing role of physics in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This history course addresses Einstein’s engagement with relativity, quantum mechanics, Nazism, nuclear weapons, philosophy, the arts, and technology, and raises basic questions about what it means to understand physics in its broader history. Participants in the course will follow seventeen lessons, each of which will present a mix of science (no prerequisites!) and the broader, relevant cultural surround. Some weeks will examine the physics concepts, while others will see excerpts of films or discuss modernist poetry that took off from relativity. Or we might be looking at the philosophical roots and philosophical consequences of Einstein’s works.
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16. Energy Within Environmental Constraints
Humanity faces an immense challenge: providing abundant energy to everyone without wrecking the planet. If we want a high-energy future while protecting the natural world for our children, we must consider the environmental consequences of energy production and use. But money matters too: energy solutions that ignore economic costs are not realistic, particularly in a world where billions of people currently can’t afford access to basic energy services. How can we proceed?
Energy Within Environmental Constraints won’t give you the answer. Instead, we will teach you how to ask the right questions and estimate the consequences of different choices.
This course is rich in details of real devices and light on theory. You won’t find any electrodynamics here, but you will find enough about modern commercial solar panels to estimate if they would be profitable to install in a given location. We emphasize costs: the cascade of capital and operating costs from energy extraction all the way through end uses. We also emphasize quantitative comparisons and tradeoffs: how much more expensive is electricity from solar panels than from coal plants, and how much pollution does it prevent? Is solar power as cost-effective an environmental investment as nuclear power or energy efficiency? And how do we include considerations other than cost?
Course Link Click Here
17. Backyard Meteorology: The Science of Weather
The weather forecasts we see every day are based an army of meteorological sensing networks and intensive computer modeling. Before the rise of these technologies, forecasts were made by understanding cloud formations and wind directions.
This course will explore the science behind weather systems by teaching the observational skills needed to make a forecast without using instruments or computer models. We’ll discuss the physical processes driving weather and the global forces that shape global climate systems. Finally, we will examine the limits of prediction in both human observations and computer models.
Can the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Take this course to find out
Course Link Click Here
18. The Health Effects of Climate Change
Our world’s climate is changing. Of the top twenty hottest years ever recorded, sixteen have occurred in the last two decades. This warming has already had a profound effect. Many feel powerless in the face of this challenge, but you can make a difference.
By looking at air quality, nutrition, infectious diseases, and human migration, this course will show you how increases in greenhouse gases impact public health. Experts working in a variety of settings will present their recommendations for responding to these challenges, and interested students will have the opportunity to learn about the research methods that measure the health effects of climate change.
Created with support from the Harvard Global Health Institute, this course will explain how climate change impacts people around the globe, but also how it directly affects you and your life. Though your risk rises with the rising global temperatures, climate change is a solvable problem, and there are things you can do to mitigate that risk.
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19. Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety
Improving access to healthcare is only as useful as the quality of care provided. Many agree that quality is important – but what is it? How do we define it? How do we measure it? And most importantly, how might we make it better?
The course is designed for those who care about health and healthcare and wish to learn more about how to measure and improve that care – for themselves, for their institutions, or for their countries. Each session will be interactive and provide concrete tools that students can use. We will empower you to raise questions, propose concrete solutions, and promote change.
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20.HarvardX: Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs
Despite medical and technological advances, half of the world’s population lacks access to essential health services, and over 8.9 million preventable deaths occur every year. There is an acute global shortage of health workers, a gap that will grow to 18 million by 2030. Studies show that training high-performing community health workers can help close these gaps and save more than 3 million lives annually.
In the past few decades, many community health worker programs across the world have demonstrated their ability to save lives — including in the hardest-to-reach areas. Yet despite this progress, lessons on how to successfully scale these programs as part of national primary health systems are not widely shared.
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21. Causal Diagrams: Draw Your Assumptions Before Your Conclusions
Causal diagrams have revolutionized the way in which researchers ask: What is the causal effect of X on Y? They have become a key tool for researchers who study the effects of treatments, exposures, and policies. By summarizing and communicating assumptions about the causal structure of a problem, causal diagrams have helped clarify apparent paradoxes, describe common biases, and identify adjustment variables. As a result, a sound understanding of causal diagrams is becoming increasingly important in many scientific disciplines.
The first part of this course is comprised of seven lessons that introduce causal diagrams and its applications to causal inference. The first lesson introduces causal DAGs, a type of causal diagrams, and the rules that govern them. The second, third, and fourth lessons use causal DAGs to represent common forms of bias. The fifth lesson uses causal DAGs to represent time-varying treatments and treatment-confounder feedback, as well as the bias of conventional statistical methods for confounding adjustment. The sixth lesson introduces SWIGs, another type of causal diagrams. The seventh lesson guides learners in constructing causal diagrams.
The second part of the course presents a series of case studies that highlight the practical applications of causal diagrams to real-world questions from the health and social sciences.
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22. Principles, Statistical and Computational Tools for Reproducible Data Science
Today the principles and techniques of reproducible research are more important than ever, across diverse disciplines from astrophysics to political science. No one wants to do research that can’t be reproduced. Thus, this course is really for anyone who is doing any intensive data research. While many of us come from a biomedical background, this course is for a broad audience of data scientists.
To meet the needs of the scientific community, this course will examine the fundamentals of methods and tools for reproducible research. Led by experienced faculty from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, you will participate in six modules that will include several case studies that illustrate the significant impact of reproducible research methods on scientific discovery.
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23) Calculus Applied! – Mathematics
In this course, we go beyond the calculus textbook, working with practitioners in social, life, and physical sciences to understand how calculus and mathematical models play a role in their work.
Through a series of case studies, you’ll learn about a wide range of applications, from predator-prey models to how statisticians use functions to model data.
With real practitioners as your guide, you’ll get hands-on experience with data and graphs, equations, calculus computations, and educated guesses and predictions.
This course provides a unique supplement to a course in single-variable calculus. Key topics include the application of derivatives, integrals and differential equations, mathematical models and parameters.
This course is for anyone who has completed or is currently taking a single-variable calculus course (differential and integral), at the high school (AP or IB) or college/university level. You will need to be familiar with the basics of derivatives, integrals, and differential equations, as well as functions involving polynomials, exponentials, and logarithms.
Course Link Click Here
24. Introduction to Probability
Probability and statistics help to bring logic to a world replete with randomness and uncertainty. This course will give you the tools needed to understand data, science, philosophy, engineering, economics, and finance. You will learn not only how to solve challenging technical problems, but also how you can apply those solutions in everyday life.
With examples ranging from medical testing to sports prediction, you will gain a strong foundation for the study of statistical inference, stochastic processes, randomized algorithms, and other subjects where probability is needed.
Course Link Click Here
25. American Government: Constitutional Foundations
“We the People” are the opening words of the U.S. Constitution, yet the original document did not give citizens much say in the election of their officials. Though some of those issues have been addressed, substantial barriers—gerrymandering, voter registration, and voter ID laws—still restrain the power of the vote. Why? How can a country, founded more than 200 years ago on the ideals of liberty, equality, and individualism, still struggle to empower all of its citizens equally?
This course explores the origins of U.S. political culture, how that culture informed the Constitution, and how that framework continues to influence the country’s politics and policies. We will examine the Constitution’s provisions for limited government, the division of power between the federal and state governments, and the forces that have made federalism a source of political conflict and change.
We will address how the Constitution not only established the structure of the U.S. government but guarantees personal freedoms and civil rights. These rights have been challenged and expanded in significant Supreme Court cases, which will help to illustrate how historically disadvantaged groups have struggled to realize the 14th Amendment’s promise of equality.
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26. U.S. Political Institutions: Congress, Presidency, Courts, and Bureaucracy
How do the three branches of government operate? How is power shared among Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court? What role is played by federal agencies that have no direct constitutional authority of their own?
In this part of our series on American Government, we will examine the separation of powers among the three branches of government, and the role of voters, political parties, and the broader federal bureaucracy. We’ll explore how “the people” affect the behavior of members of Congress, what constitutes success in a president’s domestic and foreign policies, and how much power an unelected judiciary should have in a democratic system.
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27.HarvardX: Introduction to American Civics: Presented by Zero-L
The hallmarks of our system of government are a written constitution with judicial review, federalism, and separation of powers. What do these involve, exactly? What are the differences between federal and state law, and how do they relate to one another? What is the relationship between a legislature and an administrative agency? What role does our centuries’ old federal Constitution play in the formulation, implementation, and interpretation of contemporary law?
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28. Child Protection: Children’s Rights in Theory and Practice
Across the world, children are at risk from violence, abuse, exploitation, and neglect. Conflict and natural disasters have forced millions to flee their homes and confront the dangers of migration and displacement. Commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking, child labor, and child marriage are problems in many countries. At-risk children and adolescents need their rights enforced if we are to protect them from harm and to ensure that they develop to their full potential.
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29. Introduction to Family Engagement in Education
In this education course, you will learn what family engagement is and why it matters to the success of students and schools. We will explore the research linking family engagement to better educational outcomes and speak directly with researchers, educators, students, and families about promising practices in the field.
Family engagement describes what families do at home and in the community to support their children’s learning and development. It also encompasses the shared partnership and responsibility between home and school.
Course Link Click Here
30. Early Childhood Development: Global Strategies for Interventions
How can we ensure that we don’t fail the next generation of children? What investments do we need to make an impact? What implementation decisions do we need to make for program success?
An estimated 250 million children in low- and middle-income countries risk not meeting their development potential in the first five years of life—leading to lifelong impacts on health, learning, behavior, and overall adult productivity. During this critical time, strategic interventions can ensure children have a strong foundation to lead healthy, productive lives as engaged citizens.
Course Link Click Here
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