Molly Melching traveled to Senegal in1974 as an exchange student from the University of Illinois. After completing her studies at the University of Dakar, Molly stayed on as a Peace Corps Volunteer creating a Children's Culture Center in Dakar. She started the first radio program for children in national languages in Senegal. Her work also took her to rural villages, where she found that many development efforts were not addressing the true needs and realities of African communities.

Relying heavily on community feedback, Molly and a team of Senegalese cultural specialists began to methodically develop a new type of education-for-development program, one that respectfully engaged communities in the process by working in their own language and using traditional methods for learning. Their efforts grew throughout the 1980s, leading Molly to found a non governmental organization in 1991. Based on a suggestion from friend and renowned African scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, Molly named the organization Tostan—a word that means "breakthrough" (as in the hatching of an egg) in the Wolof language. The word also implies spreading and sharing, the fundamental goal of the Tostan program.

Over the past 17 years, Tostan—now operating in seven African countries and 17 national languages—has developed Molly's original concepts into an internationally recognized model for community-led development. 

Molly's expertise is in developing educational materials for use at the village level in Africa, now incorporated into the Tostan Community Empowerment Program (CEP). Molly's work with Senegalese communities has also contributed to several innovative community development and communication strategies including a model of organized diffusion of information and the use of the public declaration for the abandonment of FGC and child/forced marriage.

In 1999, Molly Melching was awarded the University of Illinois Alumni Humanitarian Prize and in 2002, the Sargent Shriver Distinguished Award for Humanitarian Service. Molly and Tostan received the Anna Lindh Human Rights Award (Sweden) in 2005.  In 2007, Tostan received the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize and a UNESCO Literacy Prize. Molly and Senegalese women were voted the 2007 OneWorld Person of the Year. To date, many international films, radio programs, newspaper and magazine articles have been produced on Tostan, the Community Empowerment Program, and Molly herself.

Molly Melching lives in Senegal and continues to work with the hundreds of talented employees and volunteers who have joined Tostan along the way, spreading Tostan's program, as well as a vision of human dignity for all, to new communities and countries.