CanDo Platform - Local Medics Impact Propeller

CanDo platform enables local front-line medics to provide life-saving health services in war-devastated communities by connecting them to you.

Every day, 400 mothers and 9,000 children die in conflict and fragile-affected states, representing over half of all child and maternal mortality. War-devastated communities are dependent on local medics and aid, but the humanitarian system is broken. Syrian NGOs do 75% of the critical humanitarian work in Syria, yet they receive directly less than 1% of the Syria aid budget; the same happens to local responders across the globe. We exist to transform that.

In our first 18 months, our partner local front-line health organizations have delivered medical, psychosocial, mental health and nutrition projects and built the first-ever crowdfunded hospital, reaching 41,200 people, a third of them in hard-to-reach besieged areas.

A tragic feature of modern warfare is large-scale destruction of health services. This destroys essential infrastructure, threatens the lives of providers and patients, and encourages emigration of health professional. UN agencies and INGOs are increasingly absent from the emergency response in active war zones. As a result, countries in conflict have on average less than half the minimum recommended number of health workers with poor access to healthcare. This tends to affect vulnerable populations the most, including, pregnant women, children, the elderly, who are among the first to be deprived of the essential healthcare.

Local medics have the courage and resilience to stay and support their communities where others won’t or can't. They are best situated to deliver an impactful, agile and cost-effective response: they are the first and ongoing responders, have access to hard-to-reach populations, are accountable to their communities and know exactly what is needed, when and where. However, inadequate resourcing and support is hampering their life-saving work.

CanDo is leveraging technology, crowd-funding and global connectivity to pioneer a new locally-led health response in conflict-affected crisis. CanDo Platform supports and resources our partner local medics, nurses and aid workers to deliver health programs by connecting them directly to global citizens, philanthropists and strategic partners.

resource + connect

a) CanDo resources vetted local partner organizations to lead innovative life-saving interventions using human-centered design.

b) Our crowdfunding platform pioneers people-to-people aid, raising local responders’ profile and highlighting their impact.

invest + learn

a)  we provide local partners with a tailor-made capacity-building support program to build their sustainability and maximize impact.

b) CanDo is committed to learn by enabling innovative collaborations and, generating and sharing high-quality data to prove and improve local humanitarian action.

Millions need access to the right essential healthcare. The world is experiencing an unprecedented surge in humanitarian needs leading to an estimated 201 million people having needed assistance in 2017, the vast majority due to conflict.

By implementing our audacious project at scale, we will transform health humanitarian action across the globe by generating quality evidence and learning, leveraging transformative partnerships and catalyzing system-wide change.

Nowhere in the world is access to health services more important than in conflict-affected states. Nowhere in the world is it harder to provide effective services.

Together, we CanDo it.

Innovative resourcing mechanism for local organizations in conflict-affected areas:

• Crowdfunding platform for vetted partner organizations;

• Exclusive focus on health;

• Complemented by a support programme to maximize local partners’ impact;

• Platform leveraged to raise local front-line providers’ profile and their partnerships’ potential.

Innovation catalyst:

• Supporting innovative health-care organizations providing agile interventions in the most volatile environments;

• Enabling collaboration and innovation by connecting local partners to strategic partners across the globe.

Innovation ripple effects:

• Sharing learning from locally-led interventions we catalyse innovation and transform the humanitarian sector

• Supporting local capacity our solution provides a sought-after bridge between emergency and early recovery interventions

Technology is the bedrock of our solution.

Crowdfunding technology:

• Mechanism to channel funds directly to locally-led health programs

• Leverages global connectivity to connect war-devastated communities, among the most isolated, to a global audience of supporters and partners

Online Learning Portal: We will digitize the support programme co-developed with CanDo local partners to sustain and scale local health responses.

Measurement tools: we are committed to support developing mobile-based tools to generate quality data in the following areas

• Local population needs assessment: to ensure initiatives target the highest health priorities

• Lean impact measurement tools: to ensure programs deliver the right interventions

Targets for 2019

• Reach 90,000 hard-to-reach people in vulnerable communities

• By supporting 15 local front-line health organization to provide 30 health interventions

• Enabled by a global community crowdfunding $500,000

Partnerships

• Nurture a portfolio of strategic partners who can support local organizations with technical and non-technical assistance

• Develop strategic tech and impact/academic partnerships

Mobile-based technology - devise tools to better:

• Collect health data for needs-assessments

• Measure the outcomes and impact of partners’ health interventions

Online learning portal

• Digitize curriculum of our offline support programme. The programme, co-designed with our partners, provides tools to further increase partners’ health response effectiveness

Saving more lives by enabling more partners, better:

• Increase our portfolio of trusted local partners by a factor 10

• Expand our geographical coverage first to other conflict-affected communities in the middle east, then globally

• Upgrade the platform to crowdsourcing, enabling complementary forms of support

• Further develop CanDo support program

• Nurture a portfolio of strategic partners to support and resource local partners

Transforming the humanitarian sector:

• Collect and share high-quality data to prove and improve locally-led health interventions

• Develop an innovation hub to scale/replicate the most impactful programs

• Enable transformative intra- and cross-sector partnerships

• Pioneer innovative use of tech

Our end beneficiaries are war-affected communities reached via our network of local partner health organizations.

• Impactful partners’ portfolio: CanDo is expert in sourcing, assessing and vetting trusted local organizations and providing them with a unique support

• Access: by partnering with front-line local organizations, we reach hard-to-reach communities providing sometimes their only access to health-care.

• Breadth of needs met: our approach to health is multi-sector, reflecting the health needs of our beneficiaries

• Quality of service: our local partners deliver human-centred, needs-based interventions. Additionally, we invest in local partners and data measurement tools for maximum impact, accountability and sustainability.

In our first 18 months, we reached 41,200 people in need in Syria:

• By mobilizing over 6,000 supporters and 40 human rights and humanitarian INGOs.

• Four out of six of the health projects supported were delivered to besieged-communities beyond the reach of traditional actors.

• The first-ever crowdfunded hospital was established; Hope Hospital today treats 4,500 children/month

• We supported medical, psychosocial support, nutrition and child protection interventions.

We partner with 4 local humanitarian organizations and are on-boarding 3 more. As such, our support program is helping over 1,000 local front-line health-care workers.

In 2019 we aim to reach 90,000 end beneficiaries, focusing on women and children in hard-to-reach areas, by enabling the delivery of 30 health interventions including support in mental health, nutrition, and hygiene and sanitation.

By 2021 we aim to reach 400,000 end beneficiaries; expanding our solution to at least two other conflict-affected countries and nurturing a portfolio of 30 local front-line partners that will deliver 80 locally-led holistic health interventions.

With CanDo support program fully rolled-out, we will invest in over 4,000 front-line staff members to enable them to respond as long as their crisis endures.

Our growth is fuelled by our expertise, international profile and mindset.

Our CEO and founder is an award-winning doctor, TED fellow and global thought leader.

She founded CanDo after delivering aid for 7 years on the front-lines with various Syrian-led NGOs. During that time, she oversaw the building of six hospitals and 20 health clinics.

In the past year she met with President Obama, created close alliances with Google and other strategic partners, and her online talks reached over nine million people.

CanDo disruptive mindset is central to our success. Our lean and transparent approach enables learning and transformative collaborations.

Our target is to be 100% self-funding by 2030.

Our income-generation strategy is closely aligned to our growth and impact strategy.

A minimum impact fee of 10% is charged for all contributions made on CanDo crowdfunding platform. Our solution is set up for maximum scalability potential; still leveraging technology we can quickly scale our impact without requiring us to scale our size. As such, our platform aggressive, yet realistic growth strategy will enable us to save more lives and also result in continually growing CanDo’s financial sustainability.

Additionally, we are developing complementary income streams:

• CanDo Support program – the digital portal could include a fee system for non-partner organizations

• Corporate Packages - we are scoping the potential of packages for staff development by learning from organizations who work in resilient and creative ways in the most volatile environments.

• Locally-led health response experts – opportunity to leverage our expertise to provide trainings and/or consultancies to support humanitarian aid donors and international NGOs in their transition towards a greater and better locally-led humanitarian response.

In the shorter term, to complement our own revenue streams, we raise funds from philanthropists, awards and foundations who support CanDo vision.

Health-care delivery in war zones is in urgent need of radical transformation. The scale and urgency of health needs demand a collaborative and disruptive approach.

Becoming a Solver would accelerate our growth and impact by enabling us to collaborate with and leverage the expertise of the tech industry, business, philanthropy and civil society sectors.

We are experts in war zones health needs and care, and seek in particular experts in technology to create together life-saving interventions such as 3D printing in hospitals, medical supplies drone-delivery mechanisms, to better support local medics in delivering essential health services to the hardest-to-reach communities.

Poor safety and security - technology could enable the development of innovative, safe ways to deliver aid.

Poor funding available for locally-led health response despite commitments to fund more local and national responders - by partnering with high-profile organizations we can increase the reach of locally-led health interventions, raise the profile of local healthcare providers and generate impact data to unlock additional funding.

Scale of the need - catalysing the speed of our growth, enabling CanDo to raise the profile of locally-led humanitarian action and to develop transformative partnerships, will help saving more lives better and faster, and to catalyse system-wide change.