Project Lend an Arm

Imodoye Abioro is a medical doctor, innovator and community advocate, he's the Team Lead at Project Lend an Arm. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine & Surgery from the University of Ibadan, graduating 2018 as the winner of the prestigious Blaire Aitken Prize in Surgery. He has a certification in Molecular Biology from the PAOOSDC, University College Hospital, Nigeria and Laboratory of Translational Genomics, NIH, USA. A self-taught computer programmer, he has 6 years of experience tackling rural health problems using appropriate technology and has co-founded 3 social ventures (Lend an Arm, Bimi Online & Future Food Project) addressing blood shortages, health literacy and malnutrition respectively, impacting 20,000 lives. He is a WHO Top 30 innovator; a Finalist of UNESCO-WFEO Young Engineers competition, 2020 and UNAIDS Health Innovation Exchange, 2020. Imodoye is a StartupXS top 10 Global Changemaker passionate about sustainable development.

Everyday in Nigeria, 145 women of childbearing age, and another 150 victims of Road Traffic Accidents die because they could not get blood. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number is 1100 women, every day. Patients with Cancer or Sickle Cell Disease daily fight an uphill battle, denied lifesaving transfusions, because our health systems have large deficits of blood. Only 1 country in Africa meets its population’s demand for blood. In Nigeria, deficits are up to 1 million units of blood/year. Project Lend an Arm is a hybrid blood supply solution that uses a social strategy called 'herding' to promote voluntary blood donation; and mobile technology, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and drones to ensure quick, stable supply of safe blood to patients in need in <30 minutes. Lend an Arm, through technology, connects voluntary donors to patients in need of transfusion, enabling people to heroically save the lives of others.

We're tackling the problem of an inadequate supply of blood which poses a menace to health. The WHO asserts that donation by 1% of populations can meet a nation's demand for blood - Nigeria is unable to meet this. The Ministry of Health estimates a demand of 1.8 million units. However, the National Blood Service is only able to raise ~25,000 units with a deficit of up to a million units yearly. This deficit leads to astronomically high maternal mortality rates (Nigeria contributing to 14% of the world’s maternal deaths). 60% of annual donations in Nigeria are commercial donations, 30% from replacement donors and just 10% come from voluntary unpaid donors. Furthermore, the National Blood Service noted a consistent year-on-year decline in the number of voluntary donations across the country from 2015 to 2019 when data was last published. Low awareness on the importance of voluntary donations, misconceptions about blood donation, lack of access to blood drives; contribute to the low rate of voluntary donations, especially in rural areas. Finally, communities suffer from poorly-planned logistics: Bad roads in sub-urban areas, traffic congestion in urban areas, poor communication between supply and demand, all deter timely delivery of blood.

Lend an Arm is a smart blood bank piloting in Nigeria. We're a youth-led, hybrid [Robot-and-App] blood supply solution addressing root causes of shortages.

A.  CONNECTING DEMAND, STORE & SUPPLY

We built Asake, an AI-driven robot that connects the entire blood supply chain end-to-end [Donor - Bank - Hospital] all from within social media apps. We implement our solution partnering with local blood banks, improving efficiency of banks joining our project by 66% in 3-months. Our robot connects Hospitals in need with safe blood, with our supply plan delivering blood to the patient's bedside.

B.    SUPPLY LOGISTICS

We utilize a plan, leveraging two point-of-care technologies, Internet of Things and delivery drones to ensure delivery of blood in <30 minutes.

C. IMPROVING VOLUNTARY DONATION

• The venture runs serial blood donation awareness campaigns with extensive use of local electronic, print and social media in both English and Yoruba languages to educate the public – house-to-house visits in rural areas and door-to-door visits on University campuses.
• During campaigns, we hold serial mobile blood drives in multiple locations, at drives, donors are registered on our App where they can chat and bond with one another, create virtual drive campaigns, and track their donations.

Ibadan, West Africa’s largest city is our pilot area, it has a high maternal mortality ratio — 262 deaths per 100,000 live births; the leading cause of these deaths is postpartum haemorrhage. In fact, 34% of pregnant women who die during labour here, die from complications of bleeding and a lack of safe blood for transfusion, our pilot survey showed. To save lives we follow a Youth-led approach: 

• AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS RUN BY LOCAL YOUTH CLUBS: Our awareness campaigns, which have sensitized over 11,000 people, are volunteer-driven, with 2211 volunteers being a part of it. These youth are students of secondary and tertiary institutions in Ibadan, who are part of local volunteer clubs (Hamstrings, Red Cross & Junior Chambers International) whom we recruit. Thus, we’re empowering local youth to be change agents, doing good, and influencing others, like a herd.
• DONOR TRAINING FOR ADVOCACY CALLED “THE HERO PROGRAM”: After each drive, registered donors in contiguous locations who consent are recruited for a blood-donation advocacy training. These trained ‘Heroes’ are then given badges as community advocates for voluntary donation, helping recruit new voluntary donors.

• IMPLEMENTING QUALITY-ASSURANCE MODELS IN PARTNER LOCAL BANKS 
• SUPPLY OF SAFE BLOOD TO HOSPITALS

Blood shortages affect 61% of nations driven by low awareness, misinformation and lack of access – social problems. Our country has a favorable demographic structure with the effervescent Youth forming a vast majority of the population. In Ibadan, this is further helped by the presence of the country’s leading education institutions – facilities concentrating over 30,000 youth; thus, their zeal can be harnessed. Furthermore, our project drastically reduces the barriers to participation, while making joining the cause to solve this problem, trendy and fashionable– a social strategy that appeals to the youth. Thus, creating awareness then generating action.

Project Lend an Arm began August 2017, in my 5th year in medical school. At the time, I was the President of a student-run Charity called Hamstrings Club. I had read an article about the American Red Cross and their unsung role in the surgery performed by Neurosurgeon Ben Carson in his book Gifted Hands, later that week I also came across a blood drive that held in Lagos for sickle cell patients. So, at the June club meeting I presented the idea of project lend an arm. The club loved it and we decided to do it. I then approached the Nigerian Red Cross society in Ibadan to partner with us and they agreed to help with the Campaign. Finally, I scheduled a meeting with the Director of the Blood Bank for the University College Hospital where I was training, and asked for a drive bus and phlebotomists, both requests she acceded to. I presented the final proposal of the original idea to the club in July. We held the first edition of Lend an Arm in Ibadan in August 2017 with volunteers from Hamstrings and Red Cross. We recruited 310 donors.

I have sadly lived through the gruesome experience of death and loss due to blood shortages in Nigeria. I founded lend an arm during my saddest moments as an adult. At the age of 23 in 2017, I lost my best friend Gbenga, a cadet of the Federal Road Safety Corps in Nigeria. Gbenga was known to be G6PD deficient. He developed a febrile illness while at work in May, 2017 and couldn’t reach me for advice as I was in school. He wasn’t getting better on the medication given at the Corps clinic and decided to self-medicate, unfortunately, the drugs he took triggered a catastrophic episode of hemolysis, by the time Gbenga was taken to the emergency room by Corp members his pcv was 11%. Try as we might, we could not get enough O-negative blood, nor donors (I was O-positive). Gbenga died following a cardiac arrest. I was bitter, and angry, and it was in that state I stumbled on Dr Carson’s book that led to the idea of Project Lend an Arm. Practicing as a doctor I have seen these challenges managing patients first-hand, and that has further fueled an insatiable desire to curb this menace.

I received medical training at the foremost medical school in sub-Saharan Africa and I’m entering my second year of clinical practice. I completed my internship at Nigeria's biggest hospital, the University College Hospital. during which I voluntarily took up special rotations in emergency medicine, obstetric emergencies and neuro-critical care. These exposures helped me to understand the dynamics that affect the decision to transfuse a patient, the time frames often at play, and the pain points in transfusion medicine on the demand-side & supply-side. I have 9 years of experience in volunteering and grassroot advocacy, entering my first volunteer role in 2011 with the SOS Children’s Villages International, Family Strengthening Program, working with rural children in vulnerable situations (single and double orphans). Since then, I have taken up leadership roles on the boards of volunteering movements in Nigeria with the Hamstrings Club, CHECK medical missions, Vincent Jason Foundation and S2L missions – organizations dealing with rural healthcare access gaps. I’m a self-taught computer programmer with proficiency in web development technologies (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript), and Artificial Intelligence (proficient in using IBM Watson cloud infrastructure and Artificial Intelligence Markup Language). Finally, I have gained practical experience implementing social solutions over the last 4 years from founding my own social ventures, and providing consultancy services that help grow social solutions into early-stage businesses, the latter I do via a charity I started called Kreative Doyens Foundation. All of these skills and experiences have equipped me to lead Lend an Arm.

Graduating from medical school brought me incredible joy and personal fulfilment, but also marked the culmination of one of the most difficult journeys of my life. My training was marred by painful personal losses that threatened to derail this Project and dream. In my first year on Project Lend an Arm (11 months after I lost Gbenga), my Father passed away following a cardiac arrest at home. I remember, questioning the value of medical knowledge, doubting if truly Doctors could save people, or it was just something we told ourselves so often we believed it. In a knee-jerk reaction I had decided to end it, but I sought advise from a mentor who asked that I perform an exercise - a Force Field analysis, then decide. I sat and performed a Kurt Lewin Force Field analysis and realized it was a poor decision. I took on an experienced colleague (the Hamstrings Chancellor at the time) as co-Founder and had him run the program for 8 months. During that period, I buried my father. Following which I returned to school and the Project. On my return, I founded our R&D team, and 9 months later, we developed our game-changing robot, Asake.

In December 2016, I became the head (“Chancelor”) of Hamstrings Club, the largest and oldest student-run charity organization in South-West Nigeria. With a rich history and alumni network, when I resumed office, the club had few high-impact projects. Our team began by engaging the then-disjointed alumni network, securing funding to the tune of $3000 in 6 months, as well as corporate endorsements. We built the club’s website, renovated the Ibadan Palliative Care center for Children, and pioneered “More Than a Sentence” (the first ever formal education program for Prison inmates at a minimum-security correctional facility in Nigeria – The Agodi Prisons). Our team established the Pediatrics Emergency Fund – a donor revolving fund for children under-five with emergencies whose parents cannot afford care for at the University College Hospital, the Fund has cared for 23 children at no cost, including care for a boy, A.G, who later graduated as best student in Oyo state Primary School leaving examination. For my work in health innovation, including Lend an Arm, in February, 2019, I was selected by the WHO as one of top 30 innovators in African Healthcare. At the age of 24, I was the youngest innovator so recognized.

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At Project Lend an Arm, our motto is, “invent the future, and be proud of it, but never satisfied”. This captures the lifeblood that runs through us. We are aiming to tackle this perennial shortage of blood in Africa by using methods that massively improve the status quo, constantly innovating.

• PIONEER USE OF CONVERSATIONAL AI: hitherto, most technological solutions aimed at the blood problem in developing countries have been software applications (e.g. Google Play Store currently has over 500 blood apps). An analysis we did showed the average download/app was 300 – a very low uptake. We realized the software application approach is becoming saturated and scales poorly alone – so we adapted, creating Asake, a cognitive virtual robot. Asake massively improves our reach. She’s built to live within apps users already utilize often, eliminating the need for donors or doctors to download/learn a new application. Asake functions on Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and even Google Assistant. With combined users numbering over 90 million on those platforms in Nigeria, we are successfully democratizing access to blood banking for everyone – a first anywhere. 
• PIONEER USE OF DRONES: the use of drones is fast gaining pace, but in Nigeria, the revolution is slow, largely due to lack of know-how. Working with partners, Lend an Arm will be the first outfit to deploy drones for blood supply logistics, massively improving the supply chain as it circumvents the road network challenges in the hinterland, improves delivery speed, and allows express delivery round-the-clock.

Project Lend an Arm is a social venture that is run on an evidence-based implementation model. Our project activities/interventions deliver lasting change following a research-backed theory of change.

THE PROBLEM

An inadequate supply of safe blood in sub-Saharan Africa, starting with Nigeria, causing preventable deaths of mothers, children, trauma victims and other vulnerable populations.

DRIVERS

• Low prevalence of voluntary unpaid donation stemming from low awareness on the importance of voluntary blood donation, misconceptions and myths about blood donation, poor access to blood donation facilities.
• Inappropriate use of blood by health professionals
• Poor quality control measures, screening and storage practices with disregard for the cold chain.
• Poor funding and government support for national blood services
• High access barriers to blood donation with few independent, community-driven interventions such as blood drives/campaigns.
• Loss of confidence in the healthcare delivery system by the general public
• Poor transparency in the pricing of blood and blood products leading to extortion of patients in need.

With an understanding of our chosen problem and its drivers, below is our theory of change to deliver lasting impact.

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS [Activities =>Outcomes]

• Media campaigns improve perception on blood donation, promoting first-time donations.
• SMS reminders modify compliance behavior positively
• Media coverage influences perception & behavior among the population.
• Social gatherings of people with a common interest leads to formation of relationships and reinforcement of the shared mutual interest.
• With reduced barrier to access, participation in an event increases.

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS [Outcomes =>Goals]

• Improved knowledge and attitude towards blood donation increases donations.
• Motivated individuals become repeat donors.
• Improved knowledge among health professionals reduces the incidence of needless transfusions.

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS [Goals =>Impact]

• Adequate blood supply reduces maternal mortality and child mortality
• Complex surgeries are more likely to be done by surgeons when they are assured of a stable blood supply. 

Project Lend an Arm, being a technology-driven social change venture, impacts our communities in a myriad of important ways. First, are the people we reach with our sensitization campaigns, whom we convert to blood donors and improve their level of health literacy. Second, are the voluntary blood donors who donate with our program. They have a comprehensive health check-up before donation, with linkage to health facilities should baseline test results appear aberrant. Thus, we improve the health of our donors. Third, are the donors we train to become community advocates. Our training equips them with valuable life skills such as public speaking, negotiation; while many heroes also report an improved feeling of self-worth and purpose “from doing what really counts”. Fourth, are health workers at partner hospitals whom we train on responsible blood use, hemovigilance, and technology use in patient care. These professionals overwhelmingly reported improved job satisfaction in our post-event surveys and work far more efficiently than their counterparts [for example, it typically took doctors in Ibadan twenty-to-thirty minutes to check patients' PCVs, doctors in our partner hospitals get it in one minute – due to introduced point-of-care technologies]. Finally, the patients whose lives we save are our most direct beneficiaries. 

Project Lend an Arm currently serves 17,580 people across these five categories. Within 1-year Project Lend an Arm will be serving a total population of 50,000 people across the aforementioned categories with our five-year plan being a benchmark of 5 million people (of which 1 million are donors).

Our vision is to make blood transfusions available and safe for all people. Our Lend an Arm app started as a small forum app and has now been expanded into a full native application featuring chatting and medical records. Asake, first-of-her-kind, is fast becoming an industry-leading piece of technology too, these deliver on the former vision.

On the latter, we’ve completed proof of concepts to deliver vital solutions over the next 12 months. “Blood Safe”, a feature in-development, stands as the first-ever point-of-issue blood screening tool. It is an AI algorithm that helps identify blood fit for transfusion based on clots, hemolysis in plasma, leakage of bag and hue of RBCs. It tells doctors/nurses whether a unit of blood is safe from a picture taken with their phone.

In addition to launching “Blood Safe”, in the next year we aim to commence operations in Benin Republic, delivering 9000 units of blood to 200 hospitals while increasing our donor base from 4740 currently to 10,000. Our monthly awareness campaigns are projected to sensitize 30,000 new people over the next year, while our hero training programs will create 350 new community advocates.

Following our model of asset-light, agile systems ready for export, in 5 years we will be operating in 5 countries in West Africa – Ghana, Republic of Benin, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Nigeria, with our projected donor population at 1 million donors across 5 countries – delivering 500 units of blood daily across West Africa.

LEGAL BARRIERS

Difficulties with Regulation & Licensure. The concept of “private blood centers” like the American Red Cross blood services, is still very much in its infancy in West Africa. Thus, regulations are very prohibitive, limiting what such establishments can do. In the same vein, use of drones are heavily regulated with a license acquisition taking up to six months in some countries.

TECHNICAL BARRIER

Limited internet access in rural areas, restricting the functionality of our website, the robot and mobile application in these areas

FINANCIAL BARRIER

Inadequate upfront capital to finance expansion, for purchasing inventory, financing R&D, and covering overhead costs (including drone purchase and insurance). This is a downside of operating a non-income-earning, non-profit model as we've striven to keep the cost price of blood to the lowest in Nigeria, we run the risk of insolvency.

CULTURAL BARRIER

Firmly established negative religious and cultural beliefs concerning blood transfusion & voluntary donation. This is a problem we face among certain religious sects and in rural communities

SOCIAL & INFRASTRUCTURAL BARRIER

Unstable power supply. Due to the vital importance of storage temperatures to the viability of blood and blood products, the unstable power supply in Nigeria and other West African countries where we will be operating represents a huge business risk.

LEGAL BARRIERS

Our program will set out to lobby and convince policymakers in our host states of the vital importance of our project’s services. We are also receiving help from international expert organizations (e.g. WeRobotics) to help us navigate foreign regulation processes. Furthermore, we're partnering with local organizations with know-how.

TECHNICAL BARRIER

To tackle this, our website is designed to load few scripts and run in basic mode in places where internet connectivity is poor. We built it using a PRPL design pattern. Also, Asake functions well as an Interactive Voice Response Assistant with a dedicated hotline which can be reached completely offline. Also she runs SMS commands, thus, donors and centres in remote areas can use short codes to access our service via Asake.

FINANCIAL BARRIER

We continue to apply for grants, prizes and other non-equity opportunities. We also organize crowd-funding campaigns, leveraging on our altruistic donor network for financial support, we're starting revenue earnings in Q4, 2020.

CULTURAL BARRIER

This will require a mindset change among the populace, and that is the aim of the waves of awareness campaigns. We also, especially encourage to join, and train community leaders in our Hero program, using their social influence to dispel myths.

SOCIAL & INFRASTRUCTURAL BARRIER

To tackle this, the Project is actively seeking funds, to make heavy investments in Solar panels and 7.5KVA inverters which will ensure constant power to the vital components of our service – Drones, blood storage and sample freezers.

Junior Chambers International, Nigeria; Hamstrings Club; Ibadan Volunteer Hub; and Nigerian Red Cross all provide us with volunteers who run our serial awareness campaigns in the rural communities we reach out to.    

HemoCue AB are the manufacturers and suppliers of the Hb801® hemoglobin assessment machine we introduced to our partner hospitals, with the device a mainstay of our bloody dash.

Goa Diagnostics are the manufacturers and suppliers of the Erycard 2.0™ we introduced to our partner hospitals, the testing card is vital to the success of our bloody dash.

WeRobotics provides us with technical expertise and engineering services for our drone logistics. They are responsible for repurposing the DJI Matrice 200 V2 drones to serve as cargo drones in our project.

I2i hub, University of Geneva is a partner helping with Research and Development, providing invaluable expertise in our development of new technology and in innovation research.

UNHIE India helped us work on our go-to-market strategy, helping us develop the current asset-light, ready-for-export model we operate with.

The African Leadership Academy & The Resolution Project are funding partners of Project Lend an Arm, also providing oversight function and performance evaluation

WHO Regional Office for Africa and UNAIDS Innovation help us with brokering connections, improved exposure and visibility (as one of the WHO top 30 innovations and UNAIDS HIEx top 25 innovations).

TARGET MARKET & VALUE PROPOSITION

Our target market is the secondary and tertiary levels of the healthcare industry as blood transfusions mostly occur at these levels. Our typical users are public/private hospitals who have an in-patient service for the care of patients and routinely perform blood transfusions and surgeries but do not have their own blood bank. Thus, they patronize private blood banks.
However, unlike our network, these blood banks do not transport blood, breaking the cold chain by relatives come for it themselves. These banks are hard to reach and are slow. We provide them a safe, reactive supply of blood within the shortest time.

Furthermore, we speed up service delivery at partner hospitals by integrating electronic medical records, point-of-care technologies and process automation, allowing healthcare workers focus on patient management. We improved patient turnover and satisfaction by 15% in 1 month and 33% in 6 months respectively at our partner hospitals.

DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS
Our head office, located in Oke-Ado, Ibadan, our website, mobile application, and Asake are the ways through which existing and new customers can access our services. Payments for customers is simplified, easy and can be done seamlessly through any of the aforementioned routes. Transportation of blood and blood products to customers from our center is inside cold boxes mounted on delivery motorcycles secured by Bluetooth smart padlocks with one-time-passwords (OTP) remotely shared with receiving institution in elective cases of blood delivery, and via unmanned drones in emergency cases.

1. REVENUE GENERATION: Project Lend an Arm is a not-for-profit social enterprise however, to ensure sustainability of our project we will begin to charge partner hospitals in Q4 2020. A => Residence plan: we charge 'residence' hospitals a subscription fee billed quarterly, functioning as a blood banking-as-a-service venture. This subscription fee is our main source of revenue. We offer them the full functions of a blood bank automating and digitizing their care processes, and granting full access to the bloody dash. B => Non-residence plan: for hospitals who opt to not use us on residence basis, we offer a blood delivery service as well, they easily contact Asake (she's available via Phone, SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Twitter), or her dedicated hotline. We connect to private blood banks, our dispatch riders go pick up the units of blood at the banks and deliver to them using our secure cold chain system we charge them $5/delivery

   

2. NON-EQUITY EXTERNAL FUNDING: We will continue to generate funds by applying for grants and competitions, to cover for the cost of R&D and service expansion plans.

3. CROWDFUNDING & DONATIONS: Our project will also continue our ongoing crowdfunding campaign, actively engaging and encouraging our network of donors to become funders of our high-impact social programs.

Project Lend an Arm operated hitherto as a non-income-seeking, not-for-profit social venture. Thus, we are pre-revenue. In the last 12 months we have raised $5000 in external funding - grant from the African Leadership Academy & The Resolution Project.

For the next year our project has an aggressive fundraising plan. We are looking to raise $125,000 in grants, cost-sharing partnerships and donations, to cover our costs for R&D, service expansion and allow us to continue to subsidize the cost of blood for patients in the low-income bracket. We are also initiating income-earning efforts by charging for use of our technology from Q4 of 2020, with the generated revenue directed at covering our recurrent expenses. We have pending support from CISCO Inc., Roddenberry Foundation, Pfizer foundation and USAID.  

INFRASTRUCTURE

Blood Transport System & Cold chain set-up 

Three DJI M200 drones [~$22,500], accompanying workstation and cloud subscription. Deployed for emergency transport.

Six delivery motorcycles Bajaj boxers [$3,000]. For dispatch delivery.

A blood mobile ‘The Hubei Dali donation bus’ [$14,000] for our serial blood drives

Three Transport boxes for creek banks [$2,700]

Ten Blood cold boxes [$800]

Ten Igloohome Smart padlocks [$1000]

Blood bank equipment [Hardware]

HTZ BeeGroup 300 automated grouping system + duet reader [$4,000]

Two Desktop computers $1000

Five Donor couches $4,000

Two Plasma expressors $500

Plasma refrigerator $4000

Reagent fridge $1000

Platelet fridge $1500

Blood fridge $2000

ELISA plate reader $2000

96-test-kit 4th gen ELISA (HIV, HCV, HBV, Syphilis) - $215/set

5000 Blood bags SAGM & CPDA $.60/bag [$3000]

Software subscriptions [$3000]

Netripples management

Obviously.ai

IBM Cloud

Mixed analytics API connector

Zapier

Integromat

Twilio

Adalo

Xenioo

Power generation

5.2KW custom solar kit [$11,950]

LEGAL EXPENSES

Registration

NCAA ‘Drones for commercial work with exemption to airdrop license’ renewal [$3500 for 3 years]

Marketing, training, sensitization and advertisement campaign [$8400]

Research and Development [$11000]

Recurrent expenses [14000]

TOTAL: $119,950

The Elevate Prize is uniquely poised to accelerate us at Lend an Arm as it systematically addresses barriers to our success.

FINANCIAL

The funding provided by the prize will help finance the expansion of our service to 2 new countries within the next two years and help us complete the Research and Development of Blood Safe.

LEGAL

With connection to influencers and regulation experts, the elevate prize provides us resources to navigate the process of licensure for drone operations in Benin and Ghana (nations we will be working in 2 years).

CULTURAL

Our project runs on a model similar to the Elevate Prize Foundation – positively shining light on an action to encourage a larger audience to ape it, a concept known as herding. Hence, the invaluable positive media coverage and increased exposure our project receives from the Elevate Prize Fellowship, not only increases our reach, but directly influences members of the communities in which we work to voluntarily donate blood more, helping to directly address the social barriers of desirability.

MENTORING

Tackling this menace has been a huge learning curve. Our executive team is young, with an average age of 24. Furthermore, this is the first time many of us will be running a venture, our mentoring need is enormous. The connections to seasoned experts as mentors demonstrates the catalytic value of the Elevate Prize to us and our work, with our team in need of mentors with experience in public health & last mile logistics.

• FUNDING & REVENUE MODEL: We would like to improve our ability to raise funds as a non-profit venture as we scale-up to the rest of Africa.
• MENTORING: We are seeking mentors with public health experience, especially in last mile health logistics.
• REGULATION: Securing license for cross-border drone operations in ECOWAS countries is a daunting task and we need help in navigating the regulatory process.
• MARKETING, MEDIA & EXPOSURE: Our team would like to improve our global reach, while also learning best practices for designing brand-promotion campaigns and marketing plans/strategy.
• INNOVATION: We would like to partner with individuals or organizations who have the knowledge and/or expertise to work with us on building mobile low-cost blood banks [built with recyclable plastic as kiosks, with low set-up cost (<$2000), and ease of assembly; we're exploring a model similar to other access gap last-mile health interventions e.g. the WHO Blue Trunk library].

1. American Red Cross Blood Services: we would like to have a member of their executive team as our mentor/advisor, as our business model draws from theirs, and we hope to replicate their impact in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, for the development of Blood Safe, we would love to partner with them for field testing of the AI model in their chain of blood centers, as well as ours - to generate data on utility in both resource-sufficient and resource-constrained settings.
2. Vayu Inc.: They are a company with experience in using drones for last mile health problems in Africa (they worked in Madagascar) and we would like to learn from their experience. They have also developed a medium range cargo drone called the Vayu G1 and we would be very interested in using it for our blood supply missions to rural and creek banks from our urban blood centers.
3. Microsoft: A portfolio company of Microsoft's, Lobe.ai, has developed an intuitive deep learning tool that we would like to continue our development of Blood Safe on and would thus love to work with their team and platform.
4. USAID: We would be interested in connecting to leverage their vast network of contacts in development work in Africa, as well as funding opportunities.
5. Conceptoplastico: a Columbian firm that has developed a system for re-using plastic waste to create bricks for building houses.
6. ByFusion: A New Zealand company that has created a machine ("Blocker") for producing blocks  ("ByBlocks") from waste plastic.