Unlock Opportunities for Domestic Workers with AI
Summary
In 2025, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) committed to launch Ask Aya, an AI-powered, worker-focused digital platform with the goal of bringing 220,000 domestic workers in the United States onto the platform by 2027. Designed for and by domestic workers, this ethical AI initiative will provide culturally relevant support, answer workers’ questions in real time about their rights, pay, and safety, and equip them with personalized tools in their native language including contract templations and scripts to negotiate better wages and working conditions. This secure app will help workers document agreements, access career resources, and contextualize legal rights. Ask Aya’s personalized and culturally relevant guidance will enable workers to navigate difficult conversations with their employers, establish clear boundaries, and build confidence. It will also help overcome language barriers and isolation, empowering workers to self-advocate while prioritizing privacy. The skills and knowledge provided will help build pathways for economic mobility.
Approach
National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) commits to launch and scale Ask Aya, an AI-powered, worker-focused digital platform with the goal of bringing 10% of the U.S. domestic workforce—approximately 220,000 workers—onto the platform by 2027, equipping them with the tools to negotiate better wages and working conditions.
Designed for and by domestic workers, this ethical AI initiative will enable personalized, culturally relevant support available 24/7. It can answer workers’ questions in real time—about their rights, pay, and safety—in their own languages, shaped by their experiences.
Ask Aya will provide domestic workers with personalized tools in their native language, e.g. contract templates, customized negotiation scripts, and interactive learning modules. This secure app will help workers document agreements, access bite-sized professional development resources on their own terms and timelines, and contextualize legal rights in accessible language.
Ask Aya’s accessible, personalized, culturally relevant, and dynamic guidance will enable workers to navigate difficult conversations, establish clear boundaries, and build confidence. The AI assistant will help overcome language barriers and isolation, empowering workers to self-advocate while prioritizing privacy and security. Skills and knowledge provided will help build pathways for economic mobility.
NDWA is uniquely positioned to deliver on this commitment due to the combination of deep community trust and worker insights with proven technical expertise in building AI-powered solutions for the care sector. Since 2019, NDWA has operated a Facebook Messenger chatbot with 200,000+ Spanish-speaking workers.
This project represents a collaboration between NDWA, representing 395,000+ domestic workers nationwide; AI development firm Blackbird; care industry and human-centered design experts The Holding Co. and IDEO.org; and funding from the James Irvine Foundation and the Omidyar Network.
Action Plan
Ask Aya will allow NDWA to “Unlock Opportunities for Domestic Workers with AI”, not just in terms of economic mobility, but in building collective power. It will support workers to develop greater agency, confidence, and skills while connecting them to each other, directly addressing the greatest needs of a disaggregated workforce.
NDWA will put this plan into action across the three time and outcome horizons below, building toward helping workers take action by 1) building negotiation journeys and contract tools, 2) creating workplace efficiency tools for better record keeping, scheduling, 3) designing accompanying experiences that connect workers to each other in safe and trusted spaces.
The project’s short-term success is focused on navigating workplace challenges. NDWA is building a data ecosystem grounded in lived experience, informed by movement wisdom, and developed through deep trust and worker participation. Long-term (Horizon 3) , NDWA is exploring how aggregated proprietary-data (governed by workers) could shift standards and fundamentally shift power across the industry.
Horizon 1: Questions Answered (Q4 2025) Strategic Beta Launch: Launch “Ask Aya” beta with diverse NDWA worker committees; test and refine AI accuracy and cultural relevance through worker-led evaluation.
Horizon 2: Actions Taken (Q1 2026) Public Platform Launch: Full public launch with 24/7 AI support system; execute comprehensive media launch to drive awareness and adoption.
Horizon 3: Scaling Power (Q4 2026-2027) Foundation Tool Development: Release workplace empowerment suite: negotiation support, contract tools, time tracking, and pricing insights; execute roadshow across major markets, integrating with established NDWA programming; activate existing NDWA community through targeted digital campaigns.
Scale & Measurable Impact: Deploy advanced AI coaching adapted to individual worker circumstances; launch comprehensive digital marketing campaign to drive new user growth nationwide; measure worker outcomes including wage improvements and increased confidence.
Background
Care work is the foundation on which the American economy rests–no other work would be possible without childcare, eldercare, care for disabled loved ones, and other domestic labor. With increasing growth in the aging population and rising demand for childcare, care work will only become more essential. Failure to invest in the care economy will not only undermine US care infrastructure, but have dire impacts to economic development and stability.
The domestic workers (house cleaners, nannies, and home care workers) who perform this critical work power the economy, yet may be denied basic rights like sick leave, face harassment and retribution, and are often paid off the books–operating in informal arrangements without clear agreements or legal protections. When protections exist, they’re difficult to enforce at scale, leading to exploitation and job stagnation. Isolated from support networks, resources, and each other, disaggregated workers lack pathways for collective advocacy, community, and advancement.
The economic mobility of the 2.2M+ domestic workers across the U.S. is essential for community well-being and social equity, yet systematic marginalization of their labor perpetuates cycles of poverty and vulnerability. Most are women and women of color supporting families–per the Economic Policy Institute, 91.5% are women and 52.4% are Black, Hispanic, or Asian American and Pacific Islander women. Though 64.9% of domestic workers are US-born, compared to all other workers they are more likely to be immigrants, older, and paid less, with a median salary of $12.01/hour.
Although domestic workers have long been excluded from systems and laws meant to protect workers, technology represents a new horizon within which to champion their rights and integrate their voices. To meet this goal, National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) consulted 1,000+ workers, launching a participatory design process with interviews, diary studies, and prototype experiments to identify problems and co-design a solution: Ask Aya.
Progress Update
Partnership Opportunities
The commitment-making process and forum can provide a platform for NDWA to reach new funding partners, implementing partners, and media partners to strengthen our offerings, grow resources, and expand our overall impact across this population of workers.,NDWA is excited to share its model for building inclusive, participatory processes for involving worker voice in technology product development and AI governance. For example, the core principles were co-developed with worker leaders and emphasize that AI should enhance, not degrade, human care. They detail a focus on fair compensation, protecting data and workplace safety, and ensuring accessibility regardless of language or digital literacy.
NDWA is currently exploring how aggregated proprietary data (governed by workers) could shift standards and fundamentally shift power in the industry. These insights can unlock meaningful collaboration across movements, research, and technology, especially for those building human-centered products, training language models, or shaping the future of robotics and digital services.
Down the road, NDWA is interested in partnering with other organizations and affiliates to share access to the ecosystem of resources for their members (i.e. connecting members to opportunities for upskilling and pathways to benefits) .