Speaker: Simon Winter, Senior Vice President-Development, TechnoServe.
TechnoServe is an internationally recognized leader in the field of economic development, employing over 400 people. The company helps entrepreneurial men and women in poor areas of the developing world build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries. Its work has transformed the lives of millions of people in more than 30 countries. Over the course of four decades, TechnoServe has learned what does and doesn’t work. Its scaled-up initiatives and expansion into new industries and regions builds upon and adapts their successful business models and programs.
Speaker: Simon Berry, Founder/CEO, ColaLife.
Over recent decades many have marveled at the ubiquity of Coca-Cola, which seems to be everywhere. A handful of people have linked this with the challenge we face getting simple, lifesaving medicines to children and mothers in remote rural areas in developing countries and have suggested what lessons might be learned. Two people, Simon and Jane Berry, made it their mission to see if they could actually deliver life-saving medicine through the Coca-Cola system – they called this mission “ColaLife.” In this speech, Simon will describe the 2-year project to design and deliver an anti-diarrhea kit to remote rural areas in Zambia which included a rigorous 12-month trial (designed by Rohit Ramchandani) that measured the use of ORS and Zinc for the treatment of diarrhea in the home. He described the transition to national scale-up in Zambia, which he and Jane now manage. The impacts of the trial were impressive and the implications are huge.
Speaker: Monique Vledder, Manager/HRITF & Senior Health Specialist, The World Bank.
The idea of paying based on results achieved, rather than for inputs, is gaining significant momentum in international development and global health. Results Based Financing (RBF) encompasses a range of mechanisms designed to enhance access to and delivery of social services through the use of performance-based incentives, rewards, or subsidies. The HRITF is a multi-donor trust fund created by the World Bank in 2007 to support Result Based Financing (RBF) approaches in the health sector. The HRITF provides developing country governments and policy makers a greater menu of options to choose from when designing health sector programs. All programs are jointly financed by HRITF and IDA, the World Bank fund for the poorest countries. Over 36 pilots in 31 countries in the last 5 years with a total of US$ 2 Billion in HRITF and IDA funding have helped generate a strong understanding of how RBF based approaches can create greater value for money and help health, nutrition and population programs achieve better outcomes in reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health, and also on poverty, equity and gender issues. This speech presented highlights from select programs and pilots run by the World Bank and its country partners and highlighted key lessons learned.
Speaker: Amie Batson, Chief Strategy Officer, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH).
No child should die of a preventable disease, all mothers should have safe births and healthy newborns, and every community should have the tools it needs to thrive. Transformative innovations in new technologies and business strategies are needed to achieve that vision. In addition to developing and commercializing lifesaving health technologies, PATH brings innovations to market dynamics, health systems, collaboration models, and community engagement. Amie Batson discussed system bottlenecks to the widespread diffusion of new health technologies and PATH’s approach to ensuring faster uptake for these technologies. She also highlighted examples from innovative financing mechanisms to create incentives for global health innovation.
Speaker: David Griswold, President, Sustainable Harvest.
Pioneering a relationship-based coffee business model, Sustainable Harvest Coffee has become the largest importer in North America of fair trade and organic coffee. Sustainable Harvest’s investment in business transparency and traceability, farmer training, and pre-harvest financing brings high quality, reliable, and traceable products from smallholder farmers in the developing world to consumers in the US, Europe, and Asia. By developing a transparency-based global business platform that differs greatly from traditional commodity supply chain models, Sustainable Harvest has thrived while others have faced substantial challenges from a global economy that has stagnated and dipped. David discussed the reasons for his company’s success, the challenges ahead, and the impact of his business model.
Speaker: Arianna Legovini, Head of Development Impact Evaluation Initiative, The World Bank.
The last decade has seen a remarkable increase in demonstrating value for money and effectiveness in developmental programs run by the World Bank and other multilateral lending and grant making institutions. The standards for demonstrating impact of developmental projects have also been raised significantly. Rigorous and well-designed impact evaluation can help answer the what and the how of economic development and help design better policies. The Development Impact Evaluation Initiative (DIME) is the World Bank’s flagship initiative to generate knowledge on critical questions in the area of economic development and for evidence based policy making. With 170 completed and 280 active studies in 72 countries to date, DIME is the largest initiative in the world designed to systematically learn from development experience on the basis of rigorous impact evaluation. Arianna Legovini shared insights from many of these projects and identified missed opportunities and policy errors that can result without rigorous impact evaluation.
Speaker: Madhukar Pai, MD, Ph.D., Associate Professor, McGill University; Associate Director, McGill University Tuberculosis Centre.
Despite the scale-up of DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse), India continues to have the world’s highest burden of tuberculosis (TB). Severe forms of drug-resistant TB and high TB mortality are ominous signs of an epidemic that is far from controlled. Most TB patients seek care in the unregulated private sector where quality of care is highly variable; suboptimal diagnostics and irrational drug prescriptions are common. Both the private and public sector markets for TB have major shortcomings. This speech provided an overview of these larger market issues, and focused on one business model innovation to improve the private diagnostics market.
Speaker: Dr. Alan Robin, Scholar-in-Residence, University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center; Associate Professorship Ophthalmology/International Health, Johns Hopkins University; Clinical Professor, University of Maryland.
In a developing country, the government alone often cannot meet the health needs of all due to challenges like population growth, inadequate infrastructure, low per capita income, diseases in epidemic proportions, and illiteracy. Aravind Eye Care System provides an alternate healthcare model that supplements the efforts of the government while also financially sustainable. Dr. Alan Robin discussed the low-cost, sustainable model at Aravind Eye Care.
Speaker: Beth Keck, Senior Director, Women’s Economic Empowerment, Walmart Stores, Inc.
With more than $470 billion in revenue, Walmart has an opportunity to use its scale for social good. Beth Keck, Senior Director for Women’s Economic Empowerment, discussed key turning points in Walmart’s corporate social responsibility journey during the past decade; how the company has developed sustainability and women’s economic empowerment strategies and commitments commiserate with its size, and the role of partnerships with government, NGOs, academics and others in achieving results. Beth leads strategy and oversees implementation of Walmart’s commitment to train one million women in retail and factories, on farms, and in the US workforce. Through its global Women’s Economic Empowerment initiative, Walmart has set goals and invested more than $75 million in philanthropic giving to help change the lives of women around the world.
Speaker: Aron Betru, Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer, Financing for Development (F4D).
Over the past 15 years, development financing has undergone a dramatic landscape shift. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD’s) Development Assistance Committee Official Development Assistance (DAC ODA) as a share of total external development financing has decreased from ~20% to ~10%. Of that aid, up to 28 cents of every dollar is lost due to disbursement volatility and cash flow inefficiency – particularly with respect to global health programs. Fortunately, there is a growing trend that is causing a convergence of both the need for innovative financing approaches and the appetite to deploy them. In line with this trend, Financing for Development’s (F4D) mission and vision as a nonprofit organization is to facilitate innovative financing approaches as a means of increasing efficiency of international and domestic development financing. By advocating for, executing, and evaluating innovative financing solutions, F4D aims to bolster local economic development with long term private sector co-investment.