TouchTech Together

Dost Education

TouchTech Together

Tech+Touch early childhood support that turns every home into a child’s first classroom, regardless of literacy.

New Delhi, Delhi, India

India

Nonprofit

India is home to 100 million mothers and 160 million+ children under six (world's largest population of young children). Many mothers cannot read themselves, though they are the next generation's most motivated yet under-equipped educators. Many share a feature phone with their husbands, and digital products built for wealthier households never reach them. They face low literacy, scarce parenting information, gender norms placing caregiving on mothers, and overstretched public systems. Yet 90% of brain development happens before age six, and half of India's fifth graders cannot read a simple sentence, not because families don't care, but because the surrounding ecosystem was never built to support them. In Dost's baseline surveys, 99% of caregivers had never joined a parenting programme, nearly 80% of households earned under $1,500 yearly, and almost half belonged to historically marginalized caste groups. Despite strong evidence that responsive caregiving is among the most effective human-development investments, early childhood remains chronically underfunded (~$354 billion financing gap by 2030). The challenge isn't motivation; it's the absence of support systems designed for low-resource families. Most programmes assume intensive in-person delivery, literacy, smartphones, and connectivity. Dost bridges this gap, working with the devices, languages, and daily realities caregivers already have.

Dost is a Tech+Touch early childhood support model that helps low-income caregivers build their children's language, learning, and socio-emotional skills through everyday interactions. The model combines three integrated layers: The Digital Layer delivers practical guidance directly to caregivers. Parvarish provides one-minute IVR phonecasts that work on any mobile phone, including basic feature phones. For smartphone users, Bol Saathi is a WhatsApp-based storytelling and learning companion powered by generative AI and developed with partners including Oxford University's TalkTogether and Georgia State University. The Systems Layer embeds responsive caregiving within India's public childcare infrastructure. Dost equips Anganwadi Workers with training, tools, and content to help families practice Talk, Care, and Play. By May 2026, more than 35,000 frontline workers had been trained through government partnerships. The Community Layer reinforces behaviour change through caregiver engagement, including mothers' groups, fathers' circles, demonstrations, and community-based learning activities. Grounded in global evidence on responsive caregiving and aligned with India's NEP 2020, Aadhaarshila, and Navchetna frameworks, the model is designed to work for families regardless of literacy, smartphone ownership, or income. Six independent evaluations have shown that combining digital support with human reinforcement leads to stronger caregiver engagement and child-development outcomes than digital content alone.

Dost serves low-income caregivers and young children (0–6 years) in communities routinely excluded from mainstream parenting and early-learning services. The families we reach live in rural and peri-urban areas across Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. Almost 80% of households earn less than $1,500 annually, nearly half belong to historically marginalized caste groups, and in some areas 13% of caregivers have had no formal schooling. For 99%, Dost is the first parenting programme they have ever accessed; for 88%, no viable alternative exists. Today, Dost reaches over 550,000 caregivers and 1.1 million children through 35,000+ trained Anganwadi Workers. Most parenting programmes rely on intensive in-person delivery, literacy, smartphones, or regular service access. Dost is built for these families' realities. Through voice calls, WhatsApp-based learning, community meetings, and frontline worker support, caregivers learn simple ways to build language, learning, and socio-emotional skills through everyday interactions. The greatest gains often appear among families starting furthest behind. In our 2024–25 Uttarakhand study, children whose caregivers received phonecasts alongside community reinforcement showed a fourfold increase in sentence-attempt rates (18% to 67%). We design for the family as the system, the home as the classroom, and the caregiver as a child's first teacher.