India has over 16 crore children aged 0–6-the largest cohort of young learners on earth. Yet nearly 80% do not receive adequate early stimulation at home (NFHS-5, 2021). In the low-income households Dost serves, the ecosystem where: The family is the system. The courtyard is the classroom. The caregiver is the curriculum.
Dominant ECD frameworks exported into India were designed for contexts with bookshelves and shared-reading rituals. They do not map onto households where caregivers have limited formal schooling, multiple children share a single phone, and the home language is Bhojpuri or Awadhi rather than the Hindi of the school. Standard tools assume a baseline that does not yet exist.
The result is structural: 99% of the caregivers Dost reaches have never before accessed any parenting programme (60 Decibels, 2022–23). Half of India's fifth graders still cannot read a simple sentence-not because their families do not care, but because the ecosystem around those families was never built to support them.
Dost was created to close that gap from the inside out-not by replacing India's Anganwadi network of 1.4 million government early childhood centres, but by strengthening what already exists: the family, the frontline worker, and the community gathering.
Dost strengthens home as the first learning environment. It uses a three-layer Tech+Touch model built on the Talk, Care, Play (TCP) framework, co-developed with Harvard's Center on the Developing Child and UNICEF India.
Layer 1 (Digital): 1-minute IVR phonecasts under Parvarish reach caregivers of children aged 0 to 6 on basic phones, no internet needed. Bol Saathi, a WhatsApp storytelling bot for ages 3 to 6, was built with Oxford's TalkTogether, Promise Foundation, and Georgia State. Content is geography agnostic, in Hindi, translatable.
Layer 2 (System): ToT programmes equip Anganwadi Workers and Lady Supervisors to embed TCP into centre routines and storytelling.
Layer 3 (Community): Monthly mothers' and fathers' meetings plus Papa Ki Paathshala build peer networks.
Evidence: 60 Decibels (2022-23), UNICEF/CMS (2023), Anganwadi (2024), Bol Saathi Panel (2024-25), Purple Audacity Tech+Touch Study (2025-26). 91% of caregivers felt more confident. 89% felt less stressed. Scolding fell 21%. Positive reinforcement doubled. Physical comfort during distress rose 11% in Phonecast+CBE. 54% adopted storytelling. Children gained 20% in story comprehension. Sentence attempts nearly doubled (49% vs 14% control). Low baseline children surpassed controls, shifting from monosyllabic to full sentences with reduced hesitation. 88% of Anganwadi workers adopted play activities. 12% more CBE parents reported children asking questions during stories. The change is deep, durable, systemic.
Dost has grown into one of India's most widely reaching early-caregiving programmes. Today we serve over 500,000 caregivers and 1.1 Million children across India-Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh-with 35,000+ Anganwadi Workers trained.
Major achievements, 2024–25:
In 2024, Dost became an official partner to the Uttarakhand and Jharkhand WECD/ICDS Department for the rollout of Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi (Nutrition Along with Education), contributing directly to India's National Curriculum Framework - Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) 2022/2023, mandate on early childhood education. Dost is now present in every district of Uttarakhand, with a statewide dissemination permission, through Aanganwadi Supervisors and AWWs. In Jharkhand, Dost has been notified as a “State Task Force” Member to support ICDS initiatives.
In 2026, Dost is formally invited by the Additional Chief Secretary, WCD, Uttar Pradesh-India's most populous state, home to 30+ million children aged 0–6-to expand into 10 districts with LEGO Foundation support.
By 2027, Dost aims to reach 2.5 million children across 7 Indian states, secure at least one Dost solution integrated into national government systems, and reduce cost per child from $2.28 to $1.58 while deepening evidence through The Agency Fund, Purple Audacity, and university research collaborators.
Dost has evolved structurally-driven by evidence, not expansion alone.
In 2024, an RCT (n=2,433), supported by The Agency Fund, generated important learnings on the strengths and limitations of a fully digital model, including insights on caregiver engagement and wellbeing.
The subsequent 5-arm quasi-experimental study in Uttarakhand (Purple Audacity, 2025–26) confirmed what the null result suggested: digital tools build awareness, but durable behaviour change requires human reinforcement. Tech+Touch arms-digital plus community meetings-outperformed digital-only on every measured domain.
Three structural additions followed:
1. Community-Based Engagement (CBE): Monthly AWW-led mothers' and fathers' meetings now anchor every deployment-not as add-ons, but as the primary behaviour-change mechanism.
2. Government embedding: From NGO-scale pilots (2020–22) to formal ICDS partnership in Uttarakhand (2024) and incoming UP state expansion (2025–26).
3. Culturally-calibrated measurement: Observational tools that capture positive caregiving as it actually appears in Indian homes-guided touch, directed attention, quiet proximity-rather than imported Western signals.
Visit www.dosteducation.com to explore the Talk, Care, Play framework and evidence base, or email CEO Richa Shukla (richa@dosteducation.com) to discuss adaptation to your context. Here is a quick deep dive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14cmuIp-P8kkUKLnKjqCAkZl7gPj_EcCk/view?usp=sharing
