Field Update from Living Goods

Although I do not have direct contact with Living Goods I have always been interested in their work as the concept is nearly identical to the HealthKeepers of Freedom from Hunger, the market research for that business being the topic of my graduate thesis. I am anxious to see how the models mold as they are refined on the ground. This is a recent update from Chuck Slaughter, the founder and president:

Friends of Living Goods,

Living Goods, known as the “Avon of Rural Health”, is delighted to share the following milestones from this last fast-paced year on our journey to becoming the first fully sustainable system for defeating the diseases of poverty:

• Last May Living Goods and BRAC signed a joint venture agreement to collaborate on building a Living Goods network serving 20+ districts in Uganda.

• The Rockefeller Foundation, Mulago Foundation, Causal Fund and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation each awarded core funding to Living Goods.

• Extensive research, field study and customer focus groups helped LG identify its first 28 health products which are now in stock across the LG network.

• In a sizable launch, Community Health Promoters were carefully selected, trained equipped and deployed to serve 200 communities.

• Poverty Action Lab began helping Living Goods design a best-of-class randomized evaluation system to measure LG’s key objectives of dramatically reducing mortality and fertility rates.

• Harvard Business School and the Harvard School of Public Health selected Living Goods to participate in their Project Antares field study.

• Living Goods was awarded an exclusive Draper Richards Fellowship.

• Most recently Living Goods began developing plans to market low cost solar lanterns and high efficiency cook stoves to help poor households dramatically reduce fuel expenses and indoor pollution.

• Chris Elias- President of PATH, Paul Polak - Founder of IDE, and Erastus Kibugu of Technoserve Uganda joined the Living Goods Advisory Board.

We extend our sincere thanks to all who helped LG reach this important juncture. In particular we want to acknowledge the BRAC Uganda team and their exceptional director Mr. Khondokar Ariful Islam. Their commitment, experience and professionalism are unmatched and indispensable.

Of course this is just the beginning. We will add 300-500 more Health Promoters before the end of the year, and scale to 3,000+ in four years serving four million people in Uganda alone. In the coming years LG plans to replicate this model across the developing world with other world class partners and test expanded product offerings in clean water, power and small holder agriculture. In fact a half dozen multinational NGOs are already expressing keen interest in collaborating with LG to implement its innovative system in other countries.

Naturally, along with these opportunities abundant challenges lie ahead. Living Goods represents a disruptive innovation in rural health care that will require considerable trial and error. Building a truly sustainable, replicable business model will be one measure of Living Goods success; the far greater success will be counted in the many diseases prevented, the many children saved, and the many healthy productive years families will enjoy by virtue of having affordable essential medicines within reach.

Please feel free to contact me directly (cslaughter@livinggoods.org) if you have any questions, or are interested in partnering with or supporting Living Goods.

To Your Health,
Chuck

Bicycle Vendors spreading Nutrition

When I was in Ghana last summer I often patronized Fan Milk bicycle vendors for an afternoon ice cream treat. They represent a highly successful microfranchise model. Fan Milk itself has total assets of US $17.4 million, provides indirect employment to over 8,000 and was awarded the "Business of the Century" Award at the Millennium Excellence Awards in Accra.

An individual can become a vendor for US $22 which goes towards purchasing the bike. They sell a simple line of products, namely yogurt, chocolate milk, ice cream, and fruit popsicles. Each day the vendor buys US$33 of inventory and can make an average daily profit of $5.50 (even higher in the dry season). Vendors have the option of returning the bike if they leave the company. Vendors average 8 years with the company. Vendors can move up in the company or purchase additional bikes and sub-lease them out to new recruits.

As the franchisor, Fan Milk provides free equipment repair, biannual training on product handling and hygiene. They provide the option of health insurance to vendors. They require US$.55 per day in forced savings, which Fan Milk distributes when they leave the company.

This example has so many social benefits: environmentally friendly bicycles, high nutritional product distribution, positive employee packages (insurance, education, etc) and a high provider of employment. My major criticism of the model would be the amount of trash generated and littered from the individual packets. After plastic water sachets, the bright pink Fan Milk packaging was the most common site of trash.

This model reminds me of a couple other projects:
The recent Grameen-Danone yogurt partnership highlighted onDefeatingGlobalPoverty.

Design for the Other 90%exhibit in New York, Transportation section.
Practical Action's collection of bicycle modifications and trailers as well as the idea of a bicycle ambulance.

I think the bicycle vendor model as a microfranchise can be applied to so many different products.

Fridge for the Poor

This technology has been featured on AIDG, the Rolex Awards, and Treehugger.

"The pot-in-pot consists of two earthenware pots of different diameters, one placed inside the other. The space between the two pots is filled with wet sand that is kept constantly moist, thereby keeping both pots damp. Fruit, vegetables and other items such as soft drinks are put in the smaller inner pot, which is covered with a damp cloth. The phenomenon that occurs is based on a simple principle of physics: the water contained in the sand between the two pots evaporates towards the outer surface of the larger pot where the drier outside air is circulating. By virtue of the laws of thermodynamics, the evaporation process automatically causes a drop in temperature of several degrees, cooling the inner container, destroying harmful micro-organisms and preserving the perishable foods inside."

Brillant design. Simple. Affordable for the poor. Impact of Health and Malnutrition. Job Creation. As of 2005 the inventor had delivered over 90,000 pots. How many more places around the world can benefit from this product? How can we get it to them?

Malnutrition Microenterprise

This food processing microenterprise is called VitaGoat and has been developed by the folks over at Malnutrition Matters: Food Technology Solutions. Their system was previously recognized as a Tech Museum Award Laureate in 2005. I like that the system is self-contained, but I do wonder if a more sustainable fuel can be incorportated into the system, perhaps the charcoal innovations from MIT that I highlighted in a previous post.

Groundnut (peanut) shelling

This is a simple design that can lead to huge increases in productivity. I could have sold this machine like hotcakes in Ghana as I went to microfinance borrower group meetings. Individual woman could have used their loans to buy it or the group could have used their group savings to buy it. But it would have been a huge hit. It could easily be designed into a retail franchise. Here is their website and youtube video.

Full Belly

youtube video