Microfinances

Sustainable improvements in the nutritional status of women and their children will only be possible when their diets provide all the macro- and micro nutrients they need. Narrowing the nutrition gap requires “nutrition-sensitive” food and agriculture systems that explicitly incorporate nutrition objectives. A healthy environment is disease free and human beings who are well can work to produce more for their family. The animals shall be a means of poverty eradication for them to have meals on the table.

Approximately 125 words left (1000 characters).

Approximately 100 words left (800 characters).

Approximately 125 words left (1000 characters).

Approximately 100 words left (800 characters).

We would be able to target a wide range of communities who do have their own specifications on what they can produce. We would also be able to provide a lot of resources in financing projects and of course open our own farming for cultivation thereby generating income into the establishment. We might also be able to provide funds for persons who want to go into processing and transformation of these product and also preserving for a continuous nutrient rich society. Sustaining nutrient-rich farming will be our number one priority.

Approximately 125 words left (1000 characters).

Approximately 100 words left (800 characters).

Approximately 125 words left (1000 characters).

Approximately 100 words left (800 characters).

The concerns our solutions will address are the negative costs be it financial, health, or otherwise, that many of the substandard realities of life in the third world bring down upon its people. The problems faced are anywhere in that range from annoying, to life saving, to cost saving. In terms of just cooking, fuel usage has the hidden costs of unhealthy smoke inhalation and the fact woman needs to go to the jungle (where she could potentially be raped and killed) to chop or gather. Our solution is to design a new way for them to cook which simultaneously burns less fuel and produces less smoke.

In just our first “solution” a new stove design aimed at better fuel efficiency and lowering negative impact health of the current design, we estimate an initial cost/labor cost of around $200 US, and anticipate charging $300. $50 would go to a local individual who would be taught the idea, and the steps previously developed by us for implementing said solution. $30 would come back to our group where the capital would be spent on further testing of design solutions already in progress or possibly to jump start the process of creating more solutions on a and $20 would go to the partner firm with existing money networks.

We sell better living solutions, such as our initial community stove product, to third world community government agencies who desire a better quality of life for their constituents. Unlike traditional charities and NGOs that typically distribute handouts to individuals, our innovative products are aimed at empowering entire at risk communities. Whatever the solution may be, we are giving these communities a tool, the knowledge of how to make said tool, and more importantly how to fix it themselves if something breaks. So often, you see the good intentions of people go to waste because they get caught up in the passing out handouts. Handouts only make a difference for as long as the handout lasts, Our group's ultimate purpose is to create a model that makes a permanent difference.

The value our solutions bring are that it allows members below the poverty line to enhance their living standards. This would improve their overall livelihood. Through the micro-financing model, the primary goal of community would to repay the initial cost of the solutions we set in place. Since the majority of the solutions our company would provide are of the communal scale, the physical expense of each solution would be spread amongst the members of the society. Benefit of this is that no individual family pays more than $1-5 a year. This is an important factor as majority of the people below the poverty line earn no more than $2 dollars a day. Asking one individual family to spend more $50 for one product is an impossibility.

We currently are working on making a more efficient stove for Abuesi, Ghana, a rural fishing village where we have a contact on location. The town of Abuesi contains approximately 3,000 inhabitants, a quantity provided to us by our source. There are more than 20 towns in the 5 mile radius around Abuesi. We learned that Ghana has approximately 300 miles of coastline proving that Ghana alone has over 6,000 villages along its coastline for us to sell our innovative stove. To go beyond that, looking at the continent of Africa alone, which as an estimated 16,000 miles of coastline, our company would be looking over 300,000 potential clients we would go to for just one of our product offerings.

Identification of the most pressing needs of an area would be the very first element or activity that is required for us to succeed. Locating and defining where the most pressing needs are in a community would give us a very important, very real perspective on what the people living under the poverty line actually need. Once we identify problem, our job would be to devise the best possible solution. We would conduct all the necessary and proper testing measures to ensure the best results possible for our customers. Once we reach a design for a solution we are content with, we will begin to market it for our customers and initiate proper distribution tactics.

Our business aims to create solutions of the highest quality to ensure the better livelihood of our customers. We strive to create solutions which will impact the greater good of third world communities. By creating high end offerings at low costs, we will make better living a reality to those who would have never thought possible. We will explore the more reoccurring issues which third world communities face today, and create a collection of solutions which these communities purchase from.

Our peers and competitors are mostly NGOs that give handouts in the form of "aid" to these impoverished nations and peoples, however the improved quality of life as a result of the handout only lasts for as long as the handout. We seek to implement living solutions that empower these people to raise their standard of living without a handout, so that the difference made lasts for generations and can be potentially improved upon further.

Identification of the most pressing needs of an area would be the very first element or activity that is required for us to succeed. Locating and defining where the most pressing needs are in a community would give us a very important, very real perspective on what the people living under the poverty line actually need. Once we identify problem, our job would be to devise the best possible solution. We would conduct all the necessary and proper testing measures to ensure the best results possible for our customers. Once we reach a design for a solution we are content with, we will begin to market it for our customers and initiate proper distribution tactics.

We are working hard to increase our product pallet and create the vital connections with some of the largest third world communities across the globe. These connections will enable us to grow.

We will scale our business by not only getting a stronghold in large third world communities, but creating important and exclusive partnerships. The more communities we begin to serve, the greater the revenue we build on.

Our company envisions a future where the standard of living in the third world is equal to that of the developed nations. We strive to innovate and offer the best solutions possible to achieve this goal. Through the plethora of options our company would be able to provide, rural communities would be able to better their living standards.

Within the next one year, we hope to complete the testing phase for our initial product offering of the more efficient stove. We also expect to establish partnerships with existing micro-financing firms to be able to offer our solutions in a low cost fashion.

Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa face dreadful levels of child and maternal mortality. Yet most of these deaths could be avoided: children die mostly from benign illnesses that could easily be cured with the medical resources available locally. Mothers wait too long to bring the child to the doctor when sick, for cultural, financial and geographical reasons. As a result, complications develop from untreated diseases and become lethal, while under-used local health structures encounter economic difficulties. In many countries suffering from high mortality rates, lack of demand for health is at least as big an issue as the quality of available health structures.

Pesinet has designed and deploys a service for children under 5 that works as follows.
Families enroll their child for less than 1 USD/child/month and are entitled to:
- Regular visits from a Pesinet agent who collects and transfers data on the child’s health (weight, stools, cough, fever, etc) to the closest partnering health center via mobile phone.
- Remote monitoring of the child’s health by the doctor at the center via Pesinet’s web platform that presorts children at risk.
- Free medical examinations and 50% discount on medications for enrolled children.

Pesinet’s mission is to sustainably reduce child mortality by facilitating access to existing healthcare systems. By addressing the issue from the demand perspective and reconnecting people with healthcare structures, Pesinet aims at generating a systemic change in the healthcare situation of Sub-Saharan countries.
Our founding principles are:
• Adopt a demand-driven approach to healthcare issues
• Integrate the service into the local healthcare system
• Use technology for more efficiency
• Adopt a paying approach to ensure economic sustainability.

Pesinet offers to families:
A monitoring service that is professional and convenient:
- Home check-ups save families the effort of traveling to the center.
- The remote monitoring efficiently detects diseases. Families are reassured to know their children are monitored by a health professional.
- Families trust the agent - a women from their community – who acts as a social intermediary between them and the medical system.
The ability to save on healthcare expenditures:
- The monitoring system detects diseases before they become complicated and expensive to treat.
- The micro health insurance saves families money on consultations and medications.

Pesinet’s customers are families with children under 5 living in the zones around our partnering health centers. These are middle to low-income families, 90% of which are employed in the informal sector. Usually mothers decide to enroll their children, but the fathers pay for the service.

In Ouagadougou, Pesinet is targeting women who have stalls at markets on the outskirts of the city. For the launch of the service in Burkina Faso, Pesinet is partnering with microfinance institutions to help these women develop their income generating activities and enroll in health-savings plans, which will in turn help them pay for Pesinet’s service.

In its current phase, Pesinet has two principle means of diffusing the service:

- Via our mobile health agents, who also work as sales-women, advertising the service from door to door in the zones where they work. In addition to a fixed salary, agents receive bonuses for the number of new subscribers they enroll.
- Via our partnering health centers, who promote Pesinet’s service to patients with young children who come for consultations and are not yet enrolled.

In Burkina Faso, Pesinet will also diffuse the service via the established customer base of its partnering microfinance institutions.

The Pesinet service is currently deployed in 4 districts Bamako, Mali, and its extension is underway in Burkina Faso. Primary activites at these sites include:

o Promotion of the service in the zones surrounding our partnering health centers.
o Deployment of Pesinet’s mobile agents for regular home monitoring of enrolled children.
o Transmission of the data collected during these visits to our partnering health centers.
o Alerting families once a child is summoned by the doctor via the Pesinet mobile agents.
o Education of mothers on best practices for keeping their children in good health.
o Collection of monthly fees by the Pesinet mobile agents.

Concerning the micro health insurance aspect of its offer, Pesinet could be seen as a competitor for some mutual insurance organizations. Instead of entering into competition with them, Pesinet is exploring ways to develop win-win partnerships in order to cut expenses and boost the number of beneficiaries for both.

Some health centers in Burkina Faso mobilize volunteer health workers to pay home visits to families with young children, but this service is irregular and unprofessional. Pesinet often hires and trains these same volunteers as its home monitoring agents with authorization of the health center to complement their volunteer work in the community.

Even though families recognize that paying for the Pesinet service will save them money in the long run, mothers often don’t have the cash on hand for the monthly fee when the agent comes to collect. To address this, we will launch the service in Burkina Faso in partnership with 2 microfinance institutions that have agreed to facilitate access to microcredit for Pesinet’s clients and assist them in developing health savings, which will provide a stable source of funding for Pesinet’s monthly fee. Launch is scheduled for June 2013. If successful, we will work on integrating the same services into the model in Mali.

Security in Mali is another major concern. We have trained the local team in Mali to be fully self-sufficient in case of repatriation of international staff.

o Improve the rate of penetration in all health districts where Pesinet currently operates and expand to new districts.
o Gradually transfer operational responsibility of the service to the partnering health centers.
o Continue to train fully autonomous in-country teams composed of local staff in order to free up higher management to launch the service in new countries.

- In Mali, Pesinet has partnered with National Federation of Community Health Centers and drawn up a standard legal partnership agreement in order to rapidly extend the service to new health districts.
- The program has proven its success in Mali by way of an independent evaluation and is ready to be replicated in new countries. Assembly of a “Replication Tool Kit” is underway.

- Continue to double the number of enrolled children every two years in Mali and develop the service in Burkina Faso.
- Achieve and maintain a 20% penetration rate in all health districts where we operate.
- Diversify service to include monitoring of pregnant women.
- Adapt the model for deployment in rural areas.

Growth timeline:
- Ouagadougou:
o By June 2013, official launch in 2 different health districts.
o By December 2014, 1000 children enrolled in the new program.
o By December 2015, double the number of subscribers to 2000.
- Bamako:
o By December 2013, 1400 children enrolled.
o By December 2015, 3000 children and 800 pregnant women enrolled. Service launched with 3 new health centers.
Key activities:
- In Bamako, hire sales forces and further develop communication strategies. Design and launch a pregnancy monitoring service, in partnership with a large NGO.
- In Ouagadougou, register with national authorities and build partnerships with new health centers, microfinance institutions, and grassroots women’s organizations.

Through the Uplift Model we have been trying
1)reduce obstacles in access of quality health care :in an unregulated medical environment, the poor have little capacity and information to access quality healthcare and make appropriate choices.
2)reduce health expenses:25% of Indian population fall below the poverty line with single hospitalization every year. The poor have to rely on out of pocket expenses not only to manage their health but their finances,making their livelihood very vulnerable.
3)the information asymmetry on health and health care:due to information asymmetries on health mechanisms and the lack of effective public healthcare systems, the poor rely on misinformation and superstition, beliefs favouring diseases and deaths that could have been easily avoided

1) To reduce obstacles in access of quality health care : our solution aims to reduce health expenses (see below, 2) and guide members to appropriate healthcare facilities (through access to Uplift 24x7 Helpline).
2) To reduce health expenses : we will offer a coverage of hospitalization expenses and we can rely on Uplift network HCP providing treatment at rationalized rates.
3) To reduce the information asymmetries on health : we will spread health preventives messages, through Health Check up camps organised by the HCP network, and information provided at the time of enrolment.
To ensure affordability of this product : in the first year, employer will contribute to the premium payment. In the following year, savings facilities will be there to facilitate payment of the premium.

Uplift vision : our health in our hands
Our overall objective : a better access to health for everyone
Our underlying objectives : improve access to quality healthcare (guide members to appropriate health care facilities and reduce health expenses and ) / improve health behaviour by spreading health knowledge and preventive message.
We apply this vision and objectives in all our projects we are implementing in Uplift, including this new project "Helping our hands".

Our value proposition with the project "Helping our helps" is health financing using micro-insurance through a community-based mutual model complemented by health savings.
This health financing is for a target population that is out of the reach of national health schemes, commercial insurance and microfinance providers. This is a segment vulnerable to high health expenses in the absence of proper information and guidance.
Access to health services is the second part of our value proposition. We propose to bring quality health services, information and access to the target population by means of a multi-layered health care provider network (providing concessions rates for Uplift members), a 24x7 helpline with a medical doctor and health check-up camps.

Currently, Uplift customers are slum dwellers.
The average monthly per capita income of the families we are working with in Pune is 1900 INR (about 27€). We also measure poverty level with a in-house tool taking into account house, food habits, education, health, economic activity, documentation, financial links, ranging from level 1 to 7 (1 being the lowest). 90% of our members are level 4 and below.
Furthermore, our customers are not familiar with insurance principles, therefore systematic client education effort is required.
The specific group of customers we target in this project "Helpling our helps" are the domestic workers (housemaid, nanny, drivers, etc.) and their families, working in Pune.

In this specific project, we plan to approach domestic workers by reaching out to "cooperatives housing societies" in Pune (families who employ domestic workers). These housing societies have an office and elected office bearers among the families living in the society. We will approach them, communicate about the scheme and orient them during their monthly meetings.
We will use the following tools during those meetings : Uplift movie on health mutual fund concept, brochures for employers and for domestic workers.

Uplift is providing technical support for implementing and managing health micro-insurance program :
- Back-office support: Back office processes design, Enrolment, Insurance card issuing, Claims processing (including medical checking), Enrolment and claims quality checking
- Front office support : Front office processes design (enrolment, claims, health services), Provision of preventive health care services, 24/7 helpline, HCP network building and management, Client education, Field activities assessment
- MIS:Data recording and back-up,MIS development
- Product pricing and design
- Risk Management and product design
- Trainings
Uplift has also consultancies activities (e.g. client education tools design) and is involved in international organisations (conferences, studies..)

Our peers are :
- NGOs working on the slum areas with communities and providing micro-loans and other financial services for low income people.

Our competitors are :
- Commercial insurers providing micro-insurance products
- Government schemes
So far, these competitors have not been impeding Uplift growth : commercial insurers in India are selling micro-insurance products that most of the time are not efficient and does not match the needs of the customers. Government schemes are not fully efficient nor universal. Even though we can think that those scheme will become more and more efficient, we can work with them since OOPEs for the families who benefit from government schemes can remain high and those schemes are not providing health services.

- Our main environmental challenge is regarding the micro-insurance regulation : currently, regulation in India regarding micro-insurance only identifies partnership between commercial insurers and organizations (MFI, NGO, etc.), like for microfinance. Community-based model are under discussion with the regulator (IRDA).
- Regarding organizational challenge, resources are a challenge. Fund-raising for this project is on-going.
- Getting skilled staff for our projects (including this new one) is an individual challenge, especially to find medical doctors.

With this project, we want to target new customers group - the domestic workers - and their families, accross housing societies in Pune. Later we will target Mumbai also.

Our business is ready for growth because we have achieved stability in our current business. Therefore, we can leverage :
- our 10 years experience in implementing and managing health micro-insurance program
- our quality health care provider network in Pune
- our 24x7 helpline facility
- our in-house micro-insurance software
- our experienced staff to lead the project

- Target new groups - domestic workers and their families
- Achieve scale to ensure sustainability of the scheme (2000 families is a minimum at the beginning) along with satisfaction of the members and planned social impact.

- Short-term : settle the program and achieve scale for sustainability (2000 families - 500 hundred families per quarter in the first year) in Pune
- Mid-term (3 years) : scale it up to other cities (Bombay)