The founders of Dost Education, Sneha Seth and Sindhuja Jeyabal, met on a college campus in Berkeley, California. While discussing shared interests in technology and education and their paths to college, they agreed that a large part of their success was down to the families they were born into.
The radical question led to a radical idea.
In 2015, Dost Education set out to transform early education by showing up as a supportive friend to families, offering easy-to-follow tips and strategies based on the science of responsive caregiving. The framework was summed up in 3 words: Talk, Care, Play.
Dost showed families how to look at whatever they found around them through a child’s eyes and turn it into educational magic. Technology solved the challenge of taking these tips to the thousands of families who needed them. 1-minute phonecasts on a basic mobile phone carried tips and activities into homes everywhere. As families started sharing the joyous difference they were seeing in their children, Dost expanded its work. The phonecasts were created in 5 different languages and entered over 450,000 homes. Dost also began direct intervention to support communities of parents with discussions and technique demonstrations. Programmes for fathers facilitated gender-equitable caregiving.
Technological innovation continued to multiply the effort. Bol Saathi, chatbot aided storytelling modules were developed to enhance oral language development and thinking skills.
Today, Dost Education is a women-led, 38-person team in India. CEO Richa Shukla, a long time champion of joyful early learning, drives growth and new ideas for the way forward.
We’re working towards getting 1 million ready for school through talk, care and play.
