Social Entrepreneurship

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!

This innovative solution consists of three key pillars:

A unique public-private partnership (PPP) between the government, the community and a new cadre of private, community-based, skilled, female, health providers. With funding from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), this new cadre of providers are selected from the community, trained using WHO/Ministry of Health (MoH) accredited curriculum, and are supervised and monitored by the government in collaboration with the community.
Community ownership through the establishment of a Community Support System (CmSS), a local government-led community mobilization model that empowers the community to play a key role in addressing demand and supply side barriers through health promotion, referral support and accountability. CmSS actively contributes to identifying appropriate female candidates for health provider training, negotiates and sets fees for service with private providers (which are in line with community needs), builds awareness and promotes the services of the new cadre of private providers, supports timely referral, and monitors coverage, quality and equity of service provision to ensure transparency, accountability and voice of the community.
Social entrepreneurship and business training from JITA (CARE’s social entrepreneurship initiative) for the new cadre of providers. This training helps them develop business plans and become financially sustainable and independent by selling their health services. They also receive government reimbursement for serving poor and marginalized women through national and local social safety schemes.

Learn more about PPP by watching this video documentary!

Meet the Team

Jahangir Hossain | Program Director-Health | CARE Bangladesh

Jahangir Hoassian is a Health and Development Program development professional with over 23 years of experience in development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Primary Health Care (PHC), Reproductive Health (RH), HIV, Nutrition, WASH, Maternal and Newborn Health (MNH) programs in Pakistan, Cambodia and Bangladesh. He has provided leadership and strategic guidance to different Health, Hygiene, Nutrition and Family Planning program with budget about $30 Million in 14 districts in Bangladesh and has a special interest in public Health System Development, health and nutrition in emergency, and Behavior Change Communication (BCC) to address equity and gender issues in accessing the basic health services. Jahangir is a registered physician with Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from Dhaka University, Bangladesh and Master in Science (MSc), Public Health in Developing Countries degree from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, UK.

Rina Rani Paul | Program Manager-Research | CARE Bangladesh

Rina Rani Paul has more than eight years experience in program and research settings that resulted in an in-depth understanding of the contextual issues related to health and nutrition in Bangladesh, especially maternal and child health and nutrition and community health system. She has worked with leading Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition Research Projects in Bangladesh for four years, implementing and monitoring both efficacy and effectiveness studies in the community. In addition, she has worked with reputed study groups conducting large clinical trials and cohort studies and following pregnant women and adult population for health outcomes. Starting as a field worker, she was progressively entrusted and challenged with more complex and supervisory work involving research project management. Rina Rani passed the MBBS from Rajshahi Medical College under Rajshahi University in Bangladesh in 2000 and is currently enrolled in the Masters in Public Health Programme under the Department of Public Health, State University in Bangladesh.

Mariela Rodriguez | Senior Program Officer-SRMH | CARE USA

Mariela Rodriguez is Senior Program Officer for Knowledge Management and Global Coordination for the Sexual, Reproductive and Maternal Health (SRMH) team at CARE. Mariela focuses on finding ways to elevate and share CARE’s global SRMH programming across the CARE world and with external partners and donors. Prior to working at CARE, Mariela worked on rights-based approaches to voluntary family planning, maternal health policy networks, gender inequality and human rights. She has co-authored four peer-reviewed journal articles. She received her master’s in Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs from American University’s School of International Service and her BA in Political Science from Georgia State University.

To be hired | Senior Account Manager-Health | CARE UK