The “Top 11 in 2011 Innovators” were unveiled on December 4th, during a special Sunday evening reception prior to the launch of the mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. Pesinet is one of them and, as such, was invited to the 3-day conference gathering key players of the mHealth sector.

The mHealth Alliance, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, organized in November 2011 the “Top 11 in 2011 Innovators Challenge”, a first-of-its-kind challenge which recognizes pioneering mobile health professionals who have used mobile technology in innovative ways to improve health systems and outcomes in even the most remote areas of the world. The winners were announced at a reception held in advance of the mHealth Summit being held in the Washington, DC area.

The Top 11 in 2011 Innovators were selected through a process that included public nominations and voting on the mHealth Alliance’s HealthUnbound.org, as well as selection by a jury of experts. Nominations came from more than 30 countries around the world.

Innovators were  able to share their respective experience and showacse their work at the mHelath Alliance booth as well as actively participate in the conference during the 3 following days.

“As the mHealth community gathers for the annual mHealth Summit, we are excited to recognize these innovators, many of whom are working in low resource environments on behalf of poor and vulnerable populations,” said Karl Brown, Associate Director of applied technology at the Rockefeller Foundation. “We hope that the contributions of the Top 11 in 2011 will inspire many others to continue advancing the capabilities of mobile technologies to deliver positive health outcomes.”

The mHealth Alliance champions use of mobile technologies to improve health throughout the world. Working with diverse partners to integrate mHealth into multiple sectors, the Alliance serves as a convener for the mHealth community to overcome common challenges by sharing tools, knowledge, experience, and lessons learned.This year’s mHealth Summit was the 3rd edition of the annual gathering and brought together around 3, 000 people including leaders in government, the private sector, industry, academia, providers, and not-for-profit organizations from across the mHealth ecosystem.

>> To discover the Top 11 Innovators, click here.

Pesinet has been referenced in a recent white paper by Advanced Development for Africa (ADA) on key elements for the sucessful scale-up of mHealth programs. Pesinet was an important contributor to the report as an expert and as a case study.

Commissioned by ADA to assess current implementations of successful mHealth programs in developing country contexts, this white paper identifies elements necessary for successfully scaling up and highlights best practices and specific programmatic, operational, policy and global strategy recommendations that can promote the scale up of mHealth in developing countries.

Profiled in this report are several select mHealth programs that have been piloted and are currently in the scale up phase, and have proven enough success that they should be considered as models for other initiatives to follow. Drawing from these case studies as well as interviews with mHealth experts, including Patricia Mechael of the mHealth Alliance, David Aylward of Ashoka, Brooke Partridge of Vital Wave Consulting, Anne-Roos Weil of Pesinet and Getachew Sahlu of the WHO, the primary goal of this white paper is to provide evidence and recommendations that will enable mHealth initiatives to better plan their own scale up beyond successful pilot phases.

>> You can download the report by clicking here.

The International Prize of Convergences 2015 was awarded to Pesinet on May 4, 2011, during a ceremony at the City Hall in Paris, on the occasion of the 4th edition of the Convergence 2015 Forum.

Convergences 2015 Annual Forum aims at encouraging exchanges and partnerships towards a greater social impact in society and poverty reduction.

For its 4th edition, Convergence 2015 and the Paris City Council, in partnership with Le Monde and the European Commission, launched the Convergences 2015 Prize,  to reward the best partnerships between an social enterprise and a company or a public institution contributing to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Pesinet was nominated and elected International Laureate among nearly 20 candidates for its  partnership with the Ministry of Health of Mali and the local primary health facilities. The award was given by Pierre Schapira, Deputy Mayor for International Relations, European Affairs and Francophonie.

Pesinet’s CEO Anne Roos-Weil, and other team members present at the ceremony, welcomed the announcement of the results with great emotion.

During her speech, the CEO welcomed the initiative of Convergences 2015 and its partners. She recalled that the integrating Pesinet’s program into the healthcare system of Mali had been at the heart of Pesinet’s approach in the design and implementation of the service, and was a condition to carry out legitmate actions on a daily basis.

This award is a wonderful recognition of the work done over the past two years with health facilities and health institutions in Mali. It comes with an endowment of € 10 000, which will allow Pesinet to continue its efforts and work to extend service into new health centers.

A huge thank you to Convergence 2015 and its partners as well as the members of the jury, a big congratulations also to Cresus, winner of the France category for its program on over-indebtedness prevention, as well as the other nominees. The team also thanks Adrien de Triconot, Pierre Jullien and Le Monde de L’Economie for the tremendous media coverage given to the program at the forum. Pesinet also thanks all participants who came to discover its work on the exhibition stand at Convergences 2015.

See article published in Le Monde (in French only) :

>> L’association Crésus et Pesinet Prix du forum Convergences 2015
>> Six projets sociaux sélectionnés pour les prix “Convergences 2015
>> Anne Roos-Weil: ” Le but est d’encourager les comportements préventifs”

Terre Plurielle Foundation, the corporate foundation of Bouygues Construction, has chosen to support the Pesinet Association through a grant of € 14 620 in 2011. Astrid Pelletier, PESINET’s “godmother” in the Group and Quentin d’Epenoux, Managing Director of the Foundation tell us more about this partnership.

• Hello Astrid, why did you choose to be support PESINET as the”godmother” of the project and what was your role in the launch of this partnership?

I chose to support Pesinet because I am convinced by the approach adopted by the organisation to improve child health in Africa. The basic idea is as follows: if the disease were detected and treated early, mortality could be decrieased significantly by reducing the need for risky and costly emergency treatment and health care expenditures for families thereby reduced as well. This idea is both simple and innovative.
Being very close to two members of the Board of Directors and myself a member of the association, I have been following-up on their actions in this project for some time and know the strength of their commitment and their human and professional qualities.
So I spontaneously offered to help where I could, including by supporting the application to a Terre Plurielle Foundation ’s grant opportunity. I am happy and proud that the Group decided to accompany this type of project.

• Hello Quentin, can you tell us about the missions of the foundation and the reasons for its support to the PESINET project?

Terre Plurielle Foundation supports financially solidarity actions brought by employees of the group in the areas of health, disability, education and inclusion. The project submitted by the PESINET association was in line with strategic priorities of the foundation.
Following the investigation of the proposal presented and defended by Astrid, we requested site visits to better understand the actual functioning of the project. Members of our teams in Mali met with Pesinet’s operational, visited families with health agents during their tour and met with the Pesinet managing team.

Following these field visits and on the basis of reports we received from our teams, we chose to support the program in its development phase.

• Exactly, what project will be supported by Terre Plurielle ?

PESINET has developed an innovative service that combines home health monitoring, transmission of health information to doctors and health micro-insurance. The program is currently deployed in the districts of Bamako Coura Bamako Coura and Bolibana. More than a thousand children have benefited from the service since its launch.

Base on the encouraging results of this first phase, the NGO and its partners want to work in setting up a framework for scaling-up the program in all health centers in district 3, starting with 2 centers in 2011, thereby multiplying the number of service recipients. Terre plurielle supports Pesinet in this process, to ultimately follow 4600 children, creating 24 jobs for health agents and 4 local supervisors in the area covered.

On June 9, three social entrepreneurs were rewarded at the Social Entrepreneurs Award Ceremony, organized by the PPR Foundation in Paris. Anne Roos-Weil, co-Founder and Managing Director of Pesinet, was one of them.

Francois-Henri Pinault gave the prizes in person to the winners, during a ceremony gathering the entire team of the Foundation and members of the Foundation’s selection committee.

PPR Foundation for Women’s Dignity and Rights works to fight violence against women and to support women’s empowerment projects. It notably does so by rewarding social entrepreneurship projects dedicated to women, their families and their communities.

The winners were selected for their  projects’ ability to combine economic viability, social innovation and solidarity, and for their entrepreneurial skills. Each of them received a cash prize of 15,000 euros and mentoring by an employee from the PPR company. Medhi Benabadji, Director of Strategy at PPR, will accompany Pesinet for one year.

Francois-Henri Pinault expressed in his speech the importance attached by PPR Group to the cause of women and his personal commitment. He also indicated the growing importance of social entrepreneurship in creating economic and social value, especially in terms of job creation. “The entrepreneurial spirit is  part of PPR’s DNA ” he recalled, to explain the choice of the PPR Foundation to support social entreprises dedicated to women’s empowerment.

Each winner, along with his PPR mentor, was then given the opportunity to present its actions to the audience before receiving the award.

The other two winners were also women: Sakina M’Sa, creator and director of the Trevo workshop, a work-based and “beauty-based” dressmaking integration enterprise dedicated to women with limited access to employment, in Paris, and Maria Teresa Leal, founder of Coopa Roca, a cooperative of women living in La Rocinha favela, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Congratulations to the three winners and a big thank you to the PPR Foundation. Keep up the solidarity and female entrepreneurial spirit!

More info on the PPR Foundation website >>

Photos credits: Eric Lefeuvre

The Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Alcatel-Lucent , has provided a two-year US$60,000 grant to support the development of Pesinet’s child healthcare monitoring program in Mali.  Pesinet is a community health organization dedicated to improving the health of young children from low-income families in Mali while providing training and job opportunities for young women.

Pesinet relies on young women hired and trained to visit families to check on the health of young children and their families in their communities.  Their duties include weighing infants to monitor their growth and ensure they are getting the nutrition they need to become healthy children as well as performing regular health check-ups for children under 5 years old in low-income communities.

The Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, which emphasizes support for education and training programs, in particular for girls and young women from disadvantaged areas, will provide funding to support the development of the training program for the Pesinet health workers, and the creation of new jobs for young women in the zones covered by the service. “I would like to thank Alcatel-Lucent and the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation for their trust and support for the development of our program,” said Anne Roos-Weil, co founder and CEO of Pesinet. “This grant from the Foundation will enable us to implement an ambitious program to increase the impact of our field projects to ensure the health of more children in Mali. I am also excited that in addition to the financial support provided by the Foundation, Alcatel-Lucent employees in Senegal are volunteering to be involved in the professional mentoring of our program coordinator based in Mali, giving us some new perspectives on how we might better achieve our goals.”

Job opportunities for young people, and especially young women, are limited in Mali and they suffer from high rates of unemployment and underemployment.  In addition to providing young women a stable and formal job, those hired by the Pesinet program are provided training in professional health skills by the doctor of the local partnering healthcare center and can develop marketing skills as ambassadors of the service among families. They play a key role in educating and raising awareness of disease prevention and the importance of medical care for young children  and are recognized in their communities for their know-how.

“We are proud to support a project that will help improve the health of young children in Mali and create economic opportunities for young women by helping them develop new skills and empowering them as knowledgeable professionals in their communities and health ambassador for children,” said Béatrice Tassot, Executive Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation.”

For more information on Alcatel-Lucent Foundation: http://www2.alcatel-lucent.com/foundation/

BNP Paribas Foundation and its subsidiary in Mali, BICIM, decided to pursue the partnership with Pesinet.

After supporting in 2009 the development of an upgraded version of the technological application used for child health follow-up, BNP Paribas today chooses to contribute in the three coming years to the expansion of the proximity health activities carried out by Pesinet among families, through the deployment of its child e-health program.

BNP Paribas Foundation and BICIM identified in the service implemented by Pesinet an innovative use of technologies  to improve health education and access to proximity care for populations in Mali.

The use of information technologies enables to recreate a bound of trust between populations and healthcare structures, through the proximity work of health agents,  who visit families every week to collect key data on children’s state of health, raise awarenesss of medical follow-up and good sanitary practices.

Pesinet warmly thanks BNP Paribas for its renewed trust and welcomes this long-term partnership. The joint support from the Foundation and  BICIM will allow the organization to develop its activities in the field, to increase the number of children covered by the service, to carry out an evaluation of the program and to build improved tools for program implementation.

>> To know more about BNP Paribas Foundation, click here

Pesinet is referenced by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) among 50 innovative initiatives, and the only one dedicated to child healthcare, in its report Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor that focuses on private initiatives targeting very low income revenue population designed to achieve the United Nations Millenium Development Goals.

Pesinet has been selected among 300 projects in competition in the world to take part in the grand final of the Global Social Venture Competition organized by the Haas School of Business of the Berkeley University in California, USA, in April 2009.

Pesinet was awarded the prize Coup de Cœur — Les Echos 2007 as part of the joint program Creating an Innovative Product created by ESSEC Business School and Ecole Centrale de Paris.

We are very grateful to our partners and donors who gave us their trust to pilot and develop the Pesinet initiative.

Donors

Ashoka selected Anne Roos-Weil as one of the 2010 Fellows. Thanks to this recognition, Ashoka will provide her with financial support, networking, contacts, and pro-bono consulting services (in management, communication, legal issues, HR, etc..) by partners such as McKinsey, Latham & Watkins, Hill & Knowlton, CrossKnowledge, Krauthammer …
To know more about the Ashoka Fellowhip, click here.

The Investment Committee of Antropia awarded a sponsorship to Anne Roos-Weil, Pesinet’s Managing Director, to dedicate her time to run and develop Pesinet. Antropia is a structure co-founded by the Chair of Social Entrepreneurship of the ESSEC Business School and Caisse d’Epargne Ile de France to support social entrepreneurs. Antropia provides them with strategic support to elaborate their Social Business Plan; expert advice, networking opportunities, logistical support (office facilities) and financial support.

Pesinet received a Social Entrepreneur Award from PPR Foundation in June 2010. PPR Foundation for Women’s Dignity and Rights works to fight violence against women and to support women’s empowerment projects. It notably does so by rewarding social entrepreneurship projects dedicated to women, their families and their communities. Pesinet received a cash prize of 15,000 euros and mentoring by an employee from the PPR company. Medhi Benabadji, Director of Strategy at PPR, will accompany Pesinet for one year. Read more >>

BNP Paribas Foundation and the Group’s subsudaury in Mali (BICIM) supported in 2009 the development of a state-of-the-art and upgraded version of the technological application used by Pesinet for remote health monitoring and treatment of collected data with new functionalities for real-time impact monitoring, administration of the activities and aggregation of data at local, regional
and national levels to inform public policies. The Foundation and the company subsidiary in Mali decided to renew their support to Pesinet for the three coming years. Read more >>

The Orange Mali Foundation is a founding partner of Pesinet in Mali.
The Foundation provides grant funding for the launch of the pilot program and its development. It also committed to provide grant funding for the start-up investment of new Pesinet sites in Mali. The Orange Mali Foundation focuses on health, education and culture.

Alcatel-Lucent is a founding partner of Pesinet in Mali.
The company provided start-up funding for the design of the program and the launch of the pilot phase. Pesinet was also awarded a special grant by the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation as winner of the Corporate Social Responsibilty Champion Awards. The company decided to support through its Foundation the training and job creation of Pesinet’s weighing agents by providing the NGO with a 2-year grant. Read more>>

Medex is a founding partner of Pesinet in Mali.
The company provides grant funding and in-kind donations for the pilot program. Medex is a pharmaceutical wholesaler for exportation mainly to French-speaking Africa. The objective of the company is to provide populations in Africa with affordable quality medication.


Aviva Foundation supported the development of Pesinet with a 10,000€ grant in 2010.

Group Bel Foundation supported the reinforcement of the nutrition awareness raising program as part of Pesinet and the intergration of a nutritional status surveillance module in the children health monitoring service with a 20,000€ grant in 2010.

Sanofi Espoir Corporate Foundation decided to accompany Pesinet in the long run, starting with a financial support of 30,000€ in 2010.

Pesinet and the Malian Ministry of Health signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The Ministry supports Pesinet in the development of the pilot program in Bamako Coura and its deployment in other pubic community health centers across the country.
Pesinet is showcased as one of the e-health projects supported by the recently created e-Health Agency (ANTIM).

The Université Numérique Francophone Mondiale partners with Pesinet to provide advice on heathcare for the service as well as health training for the medical personnel on the ground.