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

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.