Surabhi Rajaram, a WDI intern working in Bangladesh this summer for CARE, recently wrote a blog entry looking back on her two months in a very remote area of that country.
Rajaram, a graduate student in the School of Public Health, used a “by the numbers” format to write about the things she learned on her internship, which built on work of existing CARE projects that address critical gaps in skilled human resources by developing private community health care providers. She spent the first two months of her internship in the Sunamganj region. The last month will be spent at CARE headquarters in the capital city of Dhaka.
Rajaram assisted in the design of individual business plans for these pools of local health workers. She facilitated implementation of an inclusive business model that holds the potential to address those gaps and improve rural health care systems in a sustainable, replicable and scalable manner. She also worked closely with both Health and Private Sector Engagement (PSE) units of CARE Bangladesh.
Read her blog entry here.
She is one of 13 WDI summer interns contributing to a blog.
Read the entire blog here.
Speaker: Douglas Balfour, CEO, Geneva Global.
Geneva Global is a new type of international philanthropy services organization, working in the non-profit, the impact investment and international business arenas in order to see real social transformation focused on the three foundational pillars of education, health and economic empowerment. Doug became the CEO and owner of Geneva Global in September 2008, in a management buy-out after joining the organization in 2006 as its International Director. Prior to joining Geneva Global, Doug was co-founder and Executive Director of Integral – an alliance of 13 Western Relief and Development agencies around the world. He also co-founded the Micah Network – a 400 strong southern NGO network and a global advocacy campaign called The Micah Challenge. Prior to that, he served as General Director of Tearfund, the 6th largest relief and development agency in the UK. During that time he doubled the income and tripled the social impact of the charity. He studied geology at Southampton
University, and his first job after graduating was running diamond exploration programs in Northern Namibia. He has an MBA from Cranfield School of Management.
Speaker: Neil Gregory, Chief Strategy Officer, Investment Operations, International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Emerging markets serve as the world’s economic growth engine and the far reaching effects continue to play out. Neil Gregory discussed the evolution of emerging markets over the next 8 years based on key structural trends impacting those markets. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector in developing countries. Established in 1956, IFC is owned by 184 member countries, a group that collectively determines its policies. Its work in more than a 100 developing countries allows companies and financial institutions in emerging markets to create jobs, generate tax revenues, improve corporate governance and environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities. IFC’s vision is that people should have the opportunity to escape poverty and improve their lives.
Speaker: Onno Schellekens, Managing Director, Investment Fund for Health in Africa (IFHA).
With average GDP growth of over 5% for the past 7 years in Africa, improvements in political stability, and a quadrupling of foreign direct investments over the past years, Africa is positioning itself as an attractive market for alternative investments, not only in terms of financial returns but also in terms of social returns. Private sector development is essential in order to achieve a better healthcare system in Africa, and over the past number of years the private health sector has outperformed general economic growth, showing great potential. IFHA’s investment strategy takes into account that investing in healthcare in Africa is inherently risky. Onno discussed these challenges and the need for a new development paradigm.
Speaker: William Foote, CEO/Founder, Root Capital.
Small grassroots businesses – such as coffee farmer cooperatives and artisan associations – are engines for sustainable development and poverty alleviation in rural communities in the developing world. Considered too small and risky for mainstream banks and too large for microfinance, these grassroots businesses are caught in the middle as they cannot access the capital they need to grow and sustain their operations. Willy spoke about how Root Capital addresses this market failure through their innovative lending model that serves the needs of these remote grassroots businesses and the challenges they encounter.
Speaker: Ashifi Gogo, CEO, Sproxil. Ashifi is CEO and Founder of Sproxil, a venture-backed for-profit enterprise that delivers product authentication and supply chain consulting services to pharmaceutical companies.
Sproxil’s services allow end-consumers to verify with a simple free text message that they are not purchasing counterfeit medication. Pharmaceutical companies pay service fees to Sproxil for the increase in sales of genuine pharmaceutical products. It enables consumers to participate in bringing an end to the $75 billion trade in counterfeit medication, while putting manufacturers directly in touch with consumers to close the feedback gap in a cost-efficient scalable electronic way.
Speaker: Luciano Oliveira, Director Corporate Strategy, Cummins, Inc.
Cummins Inc., a global power leader, is a corporation of complementary business units that design, manufacture, distribute and service engines and related technologies, including fuel systems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions and electrical power generation systems. Headquartered in Columbus, Indiana, Cummins serves customers in more than 190 countries and territories through its network of 600 distributor facilities and more than 6,000 dealer locations.
Speaker: Daniella Ballou-Aares, Partner & North American Regional Director, Dalberg.
Dalberg Global Development Advisors is a strategic consulting firm that works exclusively to raise living standards in developing countries and address global issues like climate change. The firm’s work helps governments, foundations, international agencies, non-governmental organizations, and Fortune 500 companies to make sustainable improvements in the lives of disadvantaged and underserved populations around the world. Founded in 2001, Dalberg now has a diverse global team with 10 offices around the world. They bring expertise gained in the private sector to bear on problems commonly dealt with in the public and non-profit spheres.
Speaker: Amy Lehman, Founder/Exec Director, Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic.
Dr. Amy G. Lehman is the founder of the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic. The Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic is an international organization whose mission is to address the problem of health care access and education for isolated communities in the Lake Tanganyika basin/Great Lakes region in Central Africa. In this role, she has become knowledgeable in multiple ancillary fields including water security, food security, environmental conservation, rural development, mineral rights and mining issues, Great Lakes global security issues, and the rural digital divide.
Speaker: Nigel Waller, Founder & CEO, Movirtu.
Movirtu provides innovative mobile technology and business models to wireless telecommunication service providers servicing rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia to help them realize shared access to basic mobile phone services at a much lower cost than has been achieved before. Although Movirtu is a for-profit enterprise, the company has an underlying social mission: To expand the use of mobile communication by the rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia living on less than $2 a day to improve their sustainable livelihoods and help alleviate poverty.