The healthymagination Mother & Child program, a partnership between GE and Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, has a bold objective: 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.
And now, the program has taken the first big step toward achieving its objective: selecting the first group of social enterprises that will receive training and mentoring that blends Silicon Valley entrepreneurial acumen with venture impact investing. 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.
Nine African Countries, Multiple Social Business Models
The 2016 cohort for the healthymagination Mother & Child program includes social entrepreneurs working in nine countries in Africa—Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia—and addressing women and child health through a variety of social enterprise business models, from health care delivery services to providing products that detect high-risk pregnancies.
In alphabetical order, here are the social enterprises—along with the countries in which they operate and the social entrepreneurs leading them—selected for the GE-Miller Center healthymagination Mother & Child program: Access Afya, Kenya, Dr. Daphne Ngunjiri; ayzh, Kenya, Habib Anwar and Zubaida Bai; Health-E-Net, Kenya, Pratap Kumar; Hewa Tele, Kenya, Steve Alred Adudans; LifeNet International, Uganda, Burundi, and DRC, Stefanie Weiland; Live Well Social Enterprise Business, Zambia, Charles Kalonga; Lwala Community Alliance, Kenya, Julius Mbeya and Ash Lauren Rogers; Nurture Africa, Uganda, Brian Iredale; Outreach Medical Services, Nigeria, Dr. Segun Ebitanmi; Peach Health, Ghana, Cobby Amoah; PurpleSource Healthcare, Nigeria, Olufemi Sunmonu; SaferMom, Nigeria, Adeloye Olanrewaju; Telemed Medical Services, Ethiopia, Yohans Emiru; The Shanti Uganda Society, Uganda, Natalie Angell-Besseling; Tulivu Imaging, Kenya, Matthew Rehrig; and, Village Hopecore International, Kenya, Anne Gildea.
More information about the program and selected finalists is available at http://bit.ly/GEMotherChild
