Anne-Laure ROBINE just arrived in Mali for a six-month mission on the ground. We asked her to tell us more about her previous path, her motivations and the tasks she’d like to complete while in Bamako.

Anne-Laure, can you tell us more about you and your path before joining Pesinet?

I am a student at ESSEC, with a major in “social entrepreneurship”. During my studies, I worked during two years part-time at EDF Group in the Marketing Department, especially on the development of sales tools for mainly two types of customers: local authorities and social landlords.After this contract and to complete my degree, I wanted to be “in the field” and to work on a project that I felt deeply about.

Did you already know about Pesinet or did you apply by chance?

Of course I knew about Pesinet: everyone knows about this venture at ESSEC since Anne, Pesinet’s Managing Director, led the project to the finals of the Global Social Venture Competition in 2009, a contest organized by the University of Berkeley in partnership with ESSEC. At that time, I was a judge for the competition and I really got interested in this social venture. So when I knew Pesinet was recruiting an intern, I took my chance.

Can you explain why you got so interested in Pesinet?

I’ll give three reasons:

Firstly, Pesinet is a project that is exactly aligned with my vision of social entrepreneurship: namely, a project that is very focused, that is well defined and in which responses are designed following a clear need identification. It is a project that aims at the emergence of a viable structure, sustainable, efficient, helpful and responsible.

Secondly, it is a project in development, which is very motivating, even if it is a lot of work ! The program has to be consolidated, there are still many things to implement.

Thirdly, Pesinet’s actions are very meaningful to me because there are root in human and social concerns of course. I am also interested in the alliance of technology and proximity in this project…. When this is often contradictory.

Exactly what will be your main tasks be during this internship?

I have two tasks to fulfill: the first one is to assist the team in Bamako in the daily management of the program to be even more effective. The other one is to participate in the evaluation of the service, in connection with Marie-Pierre Gagnon, a Canadian researcher specializing in the evaluation of e-health projects that will carry out an independent evaluation of the program next fall.

Last question: how is it in Bamako? What are your first impressions?

I arrived one week ago. My colleagues greeted me warmly, and I began to experiment the program first-hand: the weighing of children by the local staff, medical examination, management of all children enrolled and the activities by the coordinator … it is exciting to see how Pesinet works in practice everyday.

What I am particularly struck by is the real integration of Pesinet within the health center’s activites. This is not an “adds-on” service, but really a program that supports the structure already in place. Doctors, pharmacists, administrative staff have an important role to play in the functioning of the service. All those stakeholders have to be taken into account when designing and implementing the program. This means a lot of work but also  a lot of fun!

I promise, in 6 months, I’ll tell you all this in Bambara (local language, ndlr.)…

A new training manual for Pesinet weighing agents’s weekly check-up has been designed. It explains through images the key steps of the health check-up and data collection process. Discover the images drawn by Tanguy !

On June 26, an information meeting was organized in front of the District Chief’s  house for inhabitants of Bamako Coura. Families of the district had been invited via the town crier and the local radio.

The objective of the meeting was to explain in detail the Pesinet service to the families, describe how it was working in practice, the advantages and benefits of subscribing to Pesinet in terms of decrease in health spending, health follow-up, access to examination and treatment.

After the speeches of the counsellers to the District Chief, Pesinet’s Managing Director explained the orgin of the program, its objectives and key data about health situation of under 5 in Mali.

Mrs Kanté, volunteering as animator with Pesinet, gave a inspiring speech and strongly stressed the added-value of Pesinet for the families of Bamako Coura, which has been chosen as the pilot district for the initiative.

Cheicknè Coulibaly, program coordinator, explained then the service in depth and answered families’questions.

Families already enrolled in the program also had an opportunity to give a testimony and to answer other mothers’ questions.

At the end of the meeting, populations expressed their hope to see the program develop beyond the pilot district, to benefit more populations very soon.

Some pictures:

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 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, provides funding to support the development of the training program for the Pesinet health workers as well as 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 a stable and formal job, those hired by the Pesinet program are provided training in 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.”

To know more about the foundation, click here

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

On Thursday, March 18, 2010, the CATEL network and its partners held for the 10th consecutive year a day-long conference dedicated to e-health. The conference was simultaneous broadcast by videoconference in cities across France and abroad.

Antoine de Clerck, Co-founder of Pesinet and Representative of the association in Mali, presented the Pesinet’s child health monitoring program as part of a roundtable on “patient-doctor relationship: from prevention to permanent care”, from the Ministry of Health of Mali, in Bamako, alongside the Director of the National e-health Agency (ANTIM).

During the discussion, facilitated by Lionel Buannic who animated the whole conference, Antoine explained the origin and the founding principles of Pesinet and presented the activities through a video. He explained how the relationship between patients and doctors improves thanks to Pesinet. He emphasized the key role played by our health workers to renew the bonds of trust between population and the local healthcare structures, as the representatives of health in families, the medical advisors for mothers and as the ones who encourage mothers to go to the doctor for their child when a disease is detected. Their proximity groundwork helps reconnect families with the doctors and raise awareness of prevention and medical follow-up.

Antoine also highlighted that Pesinet’s innovation does not lay as much in the technology used as in the application designed by the founders of the association and in the integration of simple technologies and tools to provide a unique response to a major health concern: reducing child mortality.

The presentation of the project attracted strong interest from the participants connected around the world. They asked many questions about the implementation of the project, lessons learned from the field, potential challenges of the family
subscription model and program evaluation.

Many e-health professionals attended the conference: occupational health professionals, industry, and institutional partners, researchers, non-profit organizations,… The goal was to highlight the experiences and existing projects in the field of Information and Telecommunication technologies and health, to facilitate their replication, and assist in developing cooperation between the multidisciplinary participants who were gathered on that day.

Objective reached as far as Pesinet is concerned: this conference has allowed us to meet in particular a nurse specialized in e- training and e-health projects who is about to join our team of volunteers to  participate in the training program of our health agents during a field mission in September and a Professor of the University of Laval, Quebec, who has offered to work on an independent assessment of the project.

Read the report from CATEL and dicover photos, video and press review of the event… (in French only)

The video clip has been shot to explain Pesinet’s children health follow-up service. It is played by people locally involved in the service.