Charles Kalonga, CARE social enterprise Live Well’s CEO, has been selected to participate in the healthymagination Mother & Child program which addresses maternal and child heath in Africa. The healthymagination Mother & Child program is a partnership between GE and Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. The objective is to improve the health of women and children in sub-Saharan Africa by training and mentoring local social enterprises that are addressing this pressing challenge. The first group of social enterprises that will receive training and mentoring has been selected. The program will also utilize Miller Center’s Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI®) methodology, which has been proven and refined through 12 years of working with more than 570 social enterprises worldwide.
The 17 social enterprises selected to be in the first cohort in the healthymagination Mother & Child program will attend a three-day, in-person workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, followed by a six-month online accelerator program that includes weekly, in-depth mentoring from Silicon Valley-based executives who themselves have undergone rigorous selection and training as social entrepreneur mentors at Miller Center, as well as GE business leaders. The healthymagination Mother & Child social entrepreneurs will complete their journey where they began, in Nairobi, with an Investor Showcase event in February 2017.
Live Well, the sustainable social enterprise established by CARE Zambia, provides rural Zambians with access to health products. Building on an existing network of rural volunteers embedded in their communities, CARE Zambia has built a robust private-sector supply chain able to consistently deliver much-needed health products to previously inaccessible areas as well as create jobs and improve livelihoods for thousands of sales agents across the country. This social enterprise was designed to be for-profit, allowing it to organically scale operations and deliver strong financial returns. CARE Zambia has cultivated a network of 2,285 Community Based Volunteers (CBVs) who use social marketing techniques to drive demand for health products in rural areas.
Live Well is not the first social business to spin off from CARE! Over the last two decades we’ve incubated businesses such as JITA and Living Blue in Bangladesh and Edyficar in Peru. CARE’s Scale X Design Accelerator is taking a more intentional approach to turning donor funded projects into sustainable business models. For example, the scaling goals of some teams, including Krishi Utsho, CHAT!, Community Scorecard and Gender Equity and Diversity, are to become self-sustaining. Congratulations to Charles and the Live Well team! Our teams are following in your footsteps!