Leadership

1. Status: Approved Jun 2008 Since: new Freedom from Hunger • Leadership • Daniel Mensah joined FFH’s MicroBusiness for Health program as Ghana country director in Jul 2006. Formerly the general manager of a health franchise and manager at a multinational health insurance firm. He has a bachelor’s in pharmacy and MBA from universities in Ghana. • Problem • Many of the diseases of the world’s poor are easily treatable. But partly due to a lack of knowledge and access to basic health products, each year 1 million people die of malaria1 and 2 million from diarrhea-related causes2. • Mission • Improve the health of the poor by providing market access to affordable health and hygiene products. • Revenue • 2005: $4,039,503 • 2006: $4,977,600 • 2007: $7,356,103* • Reach • 16 countries, mostly in Latin America and West Africa • Concept • Apply the “Avon Lady” sales model to train, equip, and deploy individual merchants to sell goods that promote health. • Use a market-based approach to increase access to basic health items by: • Making it profitable for mobile salespeople to sell in their communities. • Offering products that are otherwise unavailable or unaffordable to the poor. • Analysis • This is one of our 4 key investments in the field of health franchising. Very similar to Living Goods, the key difference is that LG is a start-up while FFH is a larger organization that was started in 1946. • FFH is now best known as a pioneering microfinance institution. It differentiates itself by innovating new programs that combine traditional microloans with education, like household finances, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. Our support for their new MicroBusiness for Health initiative falls within that tradition of pushing the boundaries of microfinance. • One of FFH’s values is the dissemination of knowledge and best practices to its peers; it runs a website with technical assistance materials to support smaller MFIs in their management of programs. What we lose in nimbleness with FFH’s size, we gain in leverage: FFH has a track record of taking key learnings and sharing with the wider development community. For example, HOPE uses FFH materials. • Full-time HealthKeepers project to earn a net yearly profit of $465, with a 20% average gross margin on sales & post-loan breakeven in 18 mos. • Model • Taking advantage of FFH’s own microfinance institution in Ghana, train loan clients to sell health and hygiene products door-to-door. • Extend credit to these “HealthKeeper” salespeople for inventory. • Develop basket of goods for profitability and public health, e.g. oral rehydration salts for childhood diarrhea; bed nets to protect from mosquitos and malaria; toothpaste and sanitary pads for hygiene. • Some personal items carry higher margins, which help subsidize the public health goods. • Document training manuals and systems with the aim of replicating to FFH’s other locations, and publishing as technical assistance tools for other organizations to adopt. Plan for Scale • Progress • FFH began microfinance programs in Ghana in early 90’s, developing “Credit with Education” • MicroBusiness for Health pilot launched in Jul ‘07. Partner with VisionSpring to sell reading glasses, Living Goods to share best practices. DWFF contact: Josh Kwan, Director of International Giving. joshkwan.dwff@gmail.com Updated: 8/08. Site visit: n/a. www.freedomfromhunger.org 1World Health Organization, 2USAID, * 2007 figure reflects unrestricted operating revenue