ROI - Reducing Obstetric Injuries
We empower the most marginalized people in society to improve health outcomes for families in the poorest places on earth.
A propos de vous
A propos de vous
Prénom
Seth
Nom
Cochran
URL Twitter
URL Facebook
A propos de votre organisation
Nom
OperationOF
Site Web
Pays
États Unis, TX, Austin, Travis County
Pays dans lesquels ce projet crée un impact social
Uganda, SOR, Soroti
Votre organisation est-elle une
organisation à but non lucratif
Depuis combien de temps votre organisation opère-t-elle ?
1‐5 années
Votre organisation a-t-elle reçu des récompenses ou des prix ? Si oui, indiquez-nous lesquels.
Ashoka Young Champion of Maternal Health
Junior Chamber Osaka - Outstanding Young Person
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Innovation
Sélectionnez la phase qui s'applique le mieux à votre solution
Création (un pilote qui vient juste de démarrer)
Depuis combien de temps le projet existe-t-il ?
En place depuis moins d'un an
Le besoin : quel problème tentez-vous de résoudre ?
Women with obstetric fistula are amongst the most marginalized people in the world. The childbirth-related injury leaves them incontinent and left begging for survival. While 90% of women can be successfully treated, they cannot return to their environments without some level of economic assistance. But without the social network that secures microcredit, these women have absolutely nothing to leverage. They are really left completely out of every social and economic system, despite being healed. Without assistance, they will stand by helplessly while they watch new women enter the physical prison of fistula to join them in economic exclusion. But all of this could be prevented with commerce.
La solution: quelle solution proposez-vous ? Soyez précis !
Working with social working partners in Uganda and Ethiopia, we find women with fistula, get them treated and then train them with locally marketable business skills. We then offer the local economic development group favorable microcredit terms for accepting the woman as an equal member and providing volunteer community advocates (VCA) to help make motherhood safer. The groups are then given economic incentives for performance on safe motherhood and girl child empowerment initiatives. We also operate an investment fund to capitalize projects that employ more women and produce outputs that serve program (for example making school uniforms for girls who cannot afford them). The woman with obstetric fistula is our primary advocate and by empowering her through the group, we empower women (and communities) broadly and prevent obstetric injuries from happening in the future.
Le système : décrivez un exemple spécifique montrant de quelle façon votre initiative fonctionne ; indiquez vos principales activités.
Once the woman with obstetric fistula is repaired, trained and reinserted back in the group, she is already much better off than she would have been otherwise. But the economic development groups are generally on the margins of the economy as well. Micro-credit rates are very high in East Africa. We engage with local MFIs to provide investment capital or financial guarantees. Loan guarantees eliminate the cost of default into the loans. We also further reduce loan costs through taking on certain aspects of administration. We will also subsidize interest rates to help drive our reach and program targets. We are systematically eliminating each barrier of access to the marginalized population of rural African women. By providing this support, we change perceptions and permanently eliminate the market inefficiencies that keep women from accessing capital. Because many of these barrier are related to the community, by opening the economic markets, we also influence the community to eliminate the inefficiencies that cause obstetric injuries. So in every way, we have a high ROI.
Le marché : qui sont vos collègues et vos concurrents ? Identifiez les autres personnes qui travaillent à répondre au même besoin et indiquez ce qui vous différencie d'elles. Comment ces concurrents pourraient-ils influencer votre réussite ou votre croissance ?
At the moment, there are various organizations touching on elements of this issue, but not one organization has integrated their approach. So the inefficiencies remain. Our grass roots partners are TERREWODE in Uganda and Healing Hands of Joy in Ethiopia. We are evaluating various MFI partners and believe our program model has a narrative structure that fits with Kiva. We think the realtionship with Kiva could provide significant loan capital, which would very much open up our program. Loan capital is a very burdensome element to the projects operating cashflow. By bringing in outside capital, we can spend operating cash flow adding points of leverage to the capital's reach and impact.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Impact social
Création de l'organisation : nous voulons tout savoir sur votre déclic. Expliquez-nous oú et quand les fondateurs se sont rendu compte que cette solution possédait un véritable potentiel pour changer le monde.
I met a woman name Martha in the Rwenzori mountains of Uganda. Her mother died when Martha was 5 and the girl’s life went down from there. She fled her father’s neglect and married into an abusive family. Her mother-in-law forbid her from delivering in a hospital and then beat her when the baby was stillborn. The fistula came with claims of disease and infidelity, more beatings, and eventually, complete abandonment. We helped her get treatment, but I knew that she would return home without any way to improve her life. We studied models for reintegrating child soldiers and discovered that adding community value served best for reintegration. Micro-credit seemed a great tool for community benefit. Through necessity, we have added significant financial innovation. My financial engineering education and private equity background gave lots of inspiration for adapting the tool to reach the most highly marginalized people.
Décrivez le but de votre initiative, en insistant sur les résultats que vous souhaitez obtenir
We are attempting to develop the tool of micro-credit to reach deeper into the community and act as a targeted lever for social impact. We believe that commerce holds the key to sustainable development. By targeting the most marginalized populations, we focus our expanding reach. By refining the mechanism, we focus the social impact that evolving commercial enterprise has on a community. The primary goal of our project is to improve the lives of women and girls in rural parts of Sub-Saharan Africa through the intelligent use of investment capital.
Quel(s) obstacle(s) à l'inclusion financière votre solution cherche-t-elle à supprimer ? (plusieurs réponses possibles)
Obstacles physiques à l'accessibilité qui empêchent les communautés de bénéficier de services financiers, Manque de produits financiers abordables adaptés aux besoins des communautés défavorisées et marginalisées, Forte motivation des prestataires de services financiers pour développer le marché.
Si vous avez sélectionné «autre» ci-dessus, SVP spécifier quels autres obstacles à l'inclusion financière votre solution cherche-t-elle à supprimer:
Pour quelles communautés défavorisées ou marginalisées votre solution créera-t-elle un accès à des services financiers complets, adaptés, abordables et sécurisés?
Our model creates access to financial services for essential two groups of entrepreneurs. In the first case, we are offering micro-credit for micro enterprise at the community level. But the enterprises are collective in these rural settings. In many cases, incomplete development programs have left orphaned assets (like 50 sewing machines) in these communities. Our capital will help activate these orphaned assets and bring these small community enterprise to life. The other group of entrepreneurs to benefit from our capital are operating on a district level. These will be businesses that span several communities. We will provide growth capital to these business to the extent that their outputs support our program objectives. We call this "Micro-Mezzanine Financing®" as we mix debt and equity to fit the situation. These organizations will also provide living wage jobs to many people in our constituency base. Some of these people will eventually start their own enterprises.
Votre solution peut-elle être mise en œuvre dans d'autres régions du monde? Si oui, lesquelles?
We have designed this system specifically for replication and scalability. We believe it is a relevant model for any rural African and possibly south Asian community. The growth of micro-credit monetized human relationships and the market realized that profit could be found in extending credit where it had never before existed. The first aspect of our model does not deviate from this market strategy. The second aspect of the project is the next logical step to support those exceptionally successful micro-entrepreneurs. Micro-Mezzanine Financing® has the potential to reach far more people through the efficient deployment of investment capital. We think anywhere where micro-credit has grown rapidly is a place where district level business consolidation is a logical next step. We want to support and/or drive the creation and growth of these businesses through the distribution of debt and the purchase of convertible equity.
Si votre solution s'avérait être étonnamment efficace, comment les choses évolueraient-elles dans 10 ans?
First, micro-credit will be available to every person who desires its use. Anyone, no matter their gender or medical disability, should be able to leverage the power of individuals committed to each other. But individual or small group financing should not be the limit for enterprising people in the developing world. There will be Micro-Mezzanine Financing® set up all over the developing to consolidate and syndicate creative business concepts. This level of finance will essentially serve as the capitalizing entity to small business across the continent. As we all know, small business is the engine for sound economic development and the creation of a large and stable middle-class. We will see a cadre of small businesses with empowered staff delivering products and services in a socially accretive manner. Poverty will be serioulsy handicapped by all this smart commercial development.
Que faut-il modifier pour y parvenir?
To deliver micro-credit to our target population, we only need to coordinate the right partners in our target regions. Our social working partners are already implementing elements of this program and have participated our program development. They are ready to implement. We only need the capital to begin. Creating the Micro-Mezzanine Financing® structure is a bit more challenging. First, we need to design a structure that creates an investment environment in the absence of capital markets or legal structures. We think it is possible to create this environment to creative capture and distribution of operating cashflow. We need only a couple examples to prove the model and will select our test investments very carefully.
Jusqu'à ce jour, quels résultats a obtenu votre projet ?
To date, our partners have given small loans to individual survivors of obstetric fistula. These women, who before treatment would never have access to capital or financial services, have shown exceptional results when granted such access. Because they have survived such incredible adversity, women with fistula are exceptionally creative and resourceful - attribute fundamental to an entrepreneur's success. We have seen women who turned a $200 loan into an empire of shops, hotels and restaurants across several communities. We truly believe that expanding the model to include broader community not only helps reintegrate the fistula survivor, but it also prevents the condition from happening in the first place. By supporting successful entrepreneurs with Micro-Mezzanine Financing® we will indirectly provide living wages to the other members of the community who may not be great entrepreneurs. These people will see huge increases in quality of life and will inspire the next generation.
Quelles sont vos prévisions en termes d'impact au cours des cinq prochaines années ?
In the next five years, we will have our micro-credit program in every subcounty of the Teso region of Uganda and the Gondar region of Ethiopia. We will also have Micro-Mezzanine Financing® in both regions and would like active positions in at least 10 businesses across the target region. We will also have started to export and scale our model into Nigeria, Togo, Senegal, Tanzania and Rwanda.
Les meilleures propositions possèdent un programme solide détaillant leurs prévisions pour atteindre et suivre leurs objectifs de croissance. Identifiez vos objectifs à 6 mois pour accroître vos résultats
Build Foundation for the Program
Définissez les trois tâches principales à accomplir pour atteindre ces objectifs à six mois
Tâche 1
Complete Training Modules
Tâche 2
Finalize Partnerships
Tâche 3
Raise Start-up Captial
Et maintenant, voyez les choses en plus grand ! Identifiez vos objectifs à 12 mois
Initiate the Program
Définissez les trois tâches principales à accomplir pour atteindre vos objectifs à 12 mois
Tâche 1
Initiate Micro-credit program in Uganda
Tâche 2
Initiate Micro-credit program in Ethiopia
Tâche 3
Initiate Micro-Mezzanine Financing® in Uganda
Viabilité
Quels sont vos différents partenariats ?
We have operating partnerships with TERREWODE in Uganda, which is run by Ashoka Fellow, Alice Emasu, and Healing Hands of Joy in Ethiopia. These partnerships will operate our program on the ground, focusing primarily on the social elements of our program model. We also hope to develop partnerships with Kiva and their operating partners in our target regions. We believe that by providing narrative content and operating support to these partners, we can develop a strong relationship. Furthermore, our loan guarantees and subsidies reduce operating risk for our loan makering partners.
Actuellement, votre projet cible-t-il d'autres populations, lieux ou marchés spécifiques ? Si oui, lesquels et pourquoi ?
We are currently in discussion with several organizations that are focused on obstetric fistula/maternal health all across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. We believe such a specific topic focus roots our financial innovation with a broader support basis in whichever country or region we may want to apply the model. We would love to test the innovation in as many environments as possible and we will add additional locations to the extent the funding we raise will allow.
Quel environnement et quels facteurs organisationnels internes font la réussite de votre projet ?
For our innovation to be truly successful, everyone needs to understand not only the specific products on offer, but also the intent of those products. In this way, our team will be able to explain in how to best use our products to our customers. With a deep understanding and belief in what we are doing, staff and customers will innovate and create very high performing relationships.
Expliquez plus en détails les besoins et les offres indiqués ci-dessus ou proposez un type d'aide non mentionné dans la liste
I am very experienced in providing strategic advisory services and happily give time to anyone who wants to discuss their concept.
 | il y a 40 semaines Jessica Feingold said: Seth, Wonderful to hear you are working with Alice and her team! I look forward to hearing about this interesting model as it takes ... about this Competition Entry. - lire plus > |
| il y a 42 semaines Seth Cochran updated this Competition Entry. |
| il y a 43 semaines Seth Cochran updated this Competition Entry. |
| il y a 44 semaines Seth Cochran updated this Competition Entry. |
| il y a 44 semaines Seth Cochran submitted this idea. |