What is the name of your organization?
The DG Murray Trust (DGMT)
What is the name of your solution?
ECD Connect
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
ECD Connect is a digital work companion designed to help early educators to scale and deliver quality ECD services.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Cape Town, South Africa
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
South Africa
What type of organization is your solution team?
Other, including part of a larger organization (please explain below)
If you selected Other, please explain here.
ECD Connect is a project currently being incubated within the DG Murray Trust, a public innovator based in South Africa. In time, the plan is to have ECD Connect spun out into its own non-profit entity.
Film your elevator pitch.
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What specific problem are you solving?
"Early childhood experiences have a profound impact on brain development – affecting learning, health, behaviour, and, ultimately, productivity and income, and this helps to generate the human capital needed for economies to diversify and grow." (World Bank)
In South Africa, fewer than 40% of 3–5-year-olds attend early learning programmes, and less than half of those enrolled are developmentally on track, with those from lower-income brackets disproportionally affected. Many children enter school unprepared, limiting their potential, and thus perpetuating cycles of inequality.
Early educators play a critical role in bridging the gap to provision of universal access to quality early childhood development (ECD) services. However, this essential workforce faces significant challenges: many are underqualified, underpaid, and overwhelmed by admin. Severe resource constraints, particularly in the global south, mean supporting organisations can only offer limited face-to-face training and support, and often lack insight into what’s happening at site-level across their network.
By leveraging digital tools, we can alleviate structural inequities in ECD, providing scalable platforms to support early educators despite funding challenges.
What is your solution?
ECD Connect is a suite of digital tools, designed specifically for low-resource contexts, that empower early educators and the organisations supporting them. Our app for early educators streamlines classroom and business management, enhances professional development, and fosters communities of practice - enabling educators to sustainably deliver high-quality services, increase income, and ultimately improve outcomes for children. Our coach app and admin portal enhance organisations’ supervisory capacity and provide near real-time insights at ground-level to support targeted interventions.
Built as a progressive web app (PWA), ECD Connect is open-source, licence-free for end-users, and customisable for organisational users. It is accessible via a browser, works on low-end smartphones, requires minimal data, and can be used offline for up to 30 days.
As a digital work companion, the platform offers a range of tools, including:
- Classroom management tools, such as multilingual educational resources, daily programmes, attendance trackers, assessment and other pedagogical tools.
- Business management tools, such as income and expense trackers, calendar and scheduling, venue and other checklists.
- In-app courses for ongoing professional development.
- Community of practice and incentives programme.
See the following link:
https://youtu.be/nn-LUBXjHWo
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
ECD Connect serves early educators, the organisations working to support them, and the often vulnerable young children and caregivers who depend heavily on their services. Our target beneficiaries are those who find themselves on the margins of society across the urban-rural spectrum, where access to resources and infrastructure is typically limited. ECD Connect primarily seeks to empower early educators in this target group, many of whom are underqualified, under-supported, and struggle to earn a living wage.
Designed for low-resource contexts, ECD Connect acts as a digital work companion to provide early educators with a range of tools to assist with admin, managing classes, managing income and expenses, as well as connecting to others in their community of practice and acquiring new skills.
This will help early educators improve the quality of the services they offer, raise their value - and thereby earning opportunities - in their communities, and ultimately promote positive child outcomes.
