Développement économique

The innovation uses ideas from two sectors, health insurance and mobile money to build a social enterprise that delivers essential health services for women through a micro health insurance for maternal health services. Health insurance has long been for the upper class who can afford the institutional price of the products and the professional class who are able to procure insurance through their employers. The poor have long been ignored by this sector and left to deal with financial ruin each time someone in their family gets ill or needs maternal health services. Also, the mobile money sector is growing in Nigeria and there are various firms offering services for the unbanked poor. Our innovation allows poor pregnant women to buy micro health insurance for maternal health services using the banking services they can easily access.

The business model is different because of our target market, products and business model. We target an untapped market of low income and middle income women who are pregnant and are at a stage in their lives where health seeking behaviour is at the highest. We are committed to our dual mission, to make money so that the business is sustainable and to provide social services by delivering access to maternal health services for this un-served and underserved population. Our company introduces Innovative products delivered through an innovative channel using the paradigm of social entrepreneurship and dual bottom lines.

Mobile money is new in Nigeria and there are many interesting companies offering great services. Our company plans to partner with these companies which helps us launch immediately and allows us to focus on the products and financial sustainability instead of spending time building the product access channels. Our organisation will be successful due to the culture of our company and the quality of our team.

We plan to constantly innovate and iterate our products by building innovation into each component of our business. As we launch products, and get essential feedback from our customers, we will tweak our product so as to better deliver services. We believe constant innovation is possible if we adopt the concept of build-measure-learn feedback loop and lean thinking.

How many of your employees should not be at work today?

The Centre for Mental Health has calculated that people who turn up for work when they should be off sick (presenteeism) is costing the UK economy around £15 billion per year. Straightforward absenteeism, however, costs the UK economy around £8.4 billion.

So this is a huge, costly issue that impacts on an organisation’s productivity and effectiveness and also the individual employee’s wellbeing. Out of every four people, one of those will experience mental health problems in the course of a year, with anxiety and depression being the most common disorders.

Every organisation has a first aid kit - but how about a Wellbeing First Aid Kit? Something that treats the whole person?

Our innovative model considers the organisation as a whole but places the employee as central to the process and will provide benefits to the organisation, the employee, their family and the wider community and economy.

We can predict (with accuracy) the cost of presenteeism and absenteeism in an organisation. We can then offer solutions which we can tailor to fit the needs and structure of any organisation – it is completely flexible.

A Wellbeing First Aid Kit will enable a business to choose to stop losing money and to keep valuable employees who will be an asset to them and their community.

We are considering the person as a whole - physical, emotional and mental health.

Some people are afraid not to come into work – there may be many reasons.

The solution is to treat the person as a whole – look at the physical aspects of their job, but also look at their emotional and mental health. Have they had a death in the family? Divorce? Caring for elderly parents? Caring for adopted children? All these aspects will stop a person from performing their best at work, and at home.

We believe people don’t just need to learn how to be resilient – they need to understand their own behaviours which includes emotional and mental health issues. By doing this, they will be able to perform better at work and in life in general.

Our innovation can be tailored to any company structure, size and location. For the model to work, it has to fit the needs of an organisation and this innovation does just that. It is fluid and organic and as long as the organisation has an understanding of the issues, we can work with them.

Regarding our own internal factors, the three directors have in-depth knowledge and experience of large businesses, the NHS, education, the charity sector (‘third sector’) and emotional and mental health issues. We are a psychotherapist, a business leader and a community leader, all with very strong local, regional and national networks.

We believe passionately in treating the person as a whole and helping them to achieve.

Our business model is scalable and sustainable and is robust.

We are involved in very strong networks and consistently watch for trends. We set trends.

No one else is considering the issue we are addressing and we want to expand it to every organisation.

We talk to our users, listen to their needs and work with them.

We are looking to create new interventions with companies such as volunteering ideas – it has to be something that really matters to the company and the employees.

We create trends and share best practice with other practitioners.

Our own resilience as a company is based on a small, passionate leadership team with specific strengths but also versatility.

Because we are projected to grow not only in our number of consumers, but also in our product and service offerings, our top priorities in the coming year are:

1. To understand our organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, impact, and challenges based on the industry/environment in which we operate.
2. To improve management’s ability to recruit and retain staff based on overall organizational goals, and to be able to succeed in our fast-paced growth and scaling partnerships and impact as we aim to become a leader in impacting our field.
3. To empower management with strategies that increase productivity, joy, and staff engagement as well as to improve our internal quarterly and annual performance reviews.

WMI's top three priorities in the next year are to:
1) Fund the second year of loans for 600 borrowers in 5 existing locations in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
2) Expand the loan program to service 1,200 new borrowers in 10 new locations in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
3) Finance the construction of 2-3 additional loan program offices and community centers to service the expanded loan program throughout Uganda. The new buildings will help local partner women's organizations administer the program more effectively in their regions by providing office and meeting space.

Priority 1: Make a presence, connect with people and other organazations or companies that are like-minded.
Priority 2: Make a considerable donation to a charity from sales of the Project U Program
Priority 3: Find other ways we can empower people as it pertains to the professional success of others.

goods for good is evolving programmatically. It maintains its mission of providing every child with the opportunity to achieve through access to education and meeting basic health and nutritional needs. However, it is now doing so in a ground-breaking way. Our organization launched its new Community Enterprise Program at the end of 2012. The Program seeds micro-enterprises at the Malawian-run community centers that care for orphans and other vulnerable children in the East African country of Malawi. The top three priorities for the next year are to:

1. Refine the Community Enterprise Program and scale it.
a. goods for good’s vision is to design something that can be easily replicated at community centers throughout Malawi and other parts of Africa. In the next year our organization will test the Program’s parameters to learn what works and what doesn’t.
2. Own our niche in the market.
a. goods for good knows it is doing something unique but we can’t prove it without a well-documented survey of the social enterprise landscape. We need to improve how we pitch ourselves to a wider audience. Our staff is often so focused on execution that they don’t have time to stop and consider our position from various outsiders’ perspectives.
3. Raise enough funds to support organizational and program expansion.
a. We have calculated that we need to raise $1.15MM this year to realize our goals.