SolarFi Cares Mobile Clinics

All countries have faced one major dilemma: whether to sacrifice economic well-being to protect as many people from the virus as possible, nor to forego public health measures to conserve the country's economic status. Our solution tackles the current response to COVID-19, as well as other widespread diseases. SolarFi Cares Mobile Clinics will focus on primary preventive care equipped with health supplies for COVID-19 and other diseases, while harnessing telemedicine for advanced clinical support in rural areas where this is not currently accessible. When these clinics are implemented on a global scale, they will foster long-term economic sustainability by creating local employment opportunities in healthcare, construction and up-keep, while incurring low maintenance costs for its solar-powered energy.

Underserved areas such as Nigeria co-exist with industrial urban centres in different parts of Africa for various reasons. Some of the underlying causes include economic disparity and pervasive poverty, which have led to rapid rural-to-urban migration, economic stagnation and depression, high unemployment rates, a struggling economy, forced or manipulated ghettozation, poor urban planning, politics, natural disasters and social conflicts.

Nigeria lost essential health and social services which were stalled with the risk of outbreaks in vaccine preventable common childhood diseases like cholera, polio, measles and pneumonia. The characteristic features of these areas are that they are illegal settlements with substandard, dingy houses of high density and congestion, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, the absence of basic amenities such as water supply, drainage and sewerage and means of disposal of garbage. 

Whether it be a global pandemic like COVID-19 or a local outbreak of another disease, the requirement for physical distancing, health education on hygiene practices of hand washing with soap, use of sanitizers and adequate sanitation practices will make for an effective public response. Child and geriatric mortality rates in these settings are projected to rise, if access to basic services are not in place and functional.

This is a strategic partnership between SolarFi and R&S Manor Medicare Group Limited that brings technology and public health expertise for improving the health and social wellbeing of disadvantaged communities.

Our solution will be implemented as a humanitarian-development continuum, addressing diseases like COVID-19 while providing economic sustainability through job opportunities. The strategy focuses on response and recovery components over 12 months.

We have developed a strategy system called the 3 E's that utilizes our SolarFi mobile clinics, which feature solar powered mobile pods.

1. Educate, inform and mobilize the general populace on positive social behavior changes to avoid infection/high infection rates. Utilizing telehealth, we will make online doctors available to remote locations.

2. Engage and Empower them through income generating activities, such as soap making, face mask making and sanitizer production and distribution.

3. Enable households through equipping them with Solar Energy supply. We will target 100% of households in each community to support the continuation of education for their adolescents. We will provide technology remotely, allowing  access to internet. Educators can use online resources for educational efforts.

Our solution aims to serve underserved communities in different countries around the world. This could be the community of Nigeria or other underpriviledged, poor communities in the United States that lack access to steady internet or job opportunities.

At SolarFi, we are dedicated to helping women and minorities recognize that, often, the reasons that some communities are underpriviledged are very complex in nature. Therefore, we believe that our SolarFi pods are versatile enough to meet these complex issues. Our pods can be adapted to meet several different issues that exist in underserved communities, be it lack of educational resources or access to proper health services.

We are currently in the process of developing potential prototypes of our mobile clinics and considering how we might alter our SolarFi pods to be better equipped to handle medical resources specifically. Additionally, we are considering plausible locations in which establishing a set of mobile clinics would be most beneficial for meeting the project's goals. The location for the pilot will be in Bugesera, Rwanda in conjunction with the non-profit Miracle Corners of the World.

Our solution is innovative because it takes into consideration multiple aspects of oppression which underserved communities face. Indeed, while these communities face lack of access to proper healthcare resources, they commonly also face lack of access to several other amenities, such as the internet, education and even jobs. Our mobile clinics aim to face four challenges in one: we will provide access to healthcare, steady internet and thus educational resources regarding health-related topics and more, and finally job opportunities in the form of clinical jobs and pod maintenance. It is our goal to allow each community to utilize these pods as they see fit, adjusting the resources provided to the unique needs of their own community.

We are currently in the process of developing our Solar Mobile Clinics, and have not yet implemented them.

To us, providing sustainable solutions to the problems that underserved communities face is a vital aspect of fighting the climate crisis. With that in mind, right now, we are testing our efforts to provide sustainable resources on a smaller scale in various locations. In 2020, we were able to form key parternships with several organizations. Some of our clients included Rosa Mexicano, Eataly, New York Fashion Week, IMG and MassMutual. Additionally, we recruited a highly-skilled COO from MIT and partnered with cities to install our pods for business use, gaining commitment from the mayor of Houston to incorporate our products into two different projects. We began manufacturing at Greentown Labs, jumpstarted our patent creation in China and were able to file our trademark. Finally, we were awarded a grant from FaceBook and successfully closed a government deal through a sole source, being the only company to make solar-powered pods.

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Our team at SolarFi consists of skilled individuals from various backgrounds who all share an interest in two things; doing something about the climate crisis and, more specifically, helping the underserved communities that have suffered the most from the climate crisis. Experienced in key areas such as leadership, business development, marketing and engineering, our team is prepared to face the challenges that our audience have.

For instance, our president, Antonio Dixon, is an MIT-trained, award-winning entrepreneur and economist with experience in healthcare (telehealth), renewable energy, and international trade, which has led him to work over 20 international markets and travel to over 60 countries. His experience visiting several disadvantaged communities in countries around the globe has aided in his passion for gaining a better understanding of the complexity of the issues that these communities face. As an African American, he aims to use his experiences to give back to his own community.

Russ Klein, head of innovation at SolarFi, is a professional innovation consultant who brings technology and best-practices to under-developed and under-served markets. He empowers people by inspiring them to experiment with disruptive tools and processes and encouraging them to use 21st-century technologies to create a better world. Over the last 25 years, he has founded more than a dozen startup technology companies developing software and information products for industries such as e-commerce, machine learning, multifactor security and biometrics, education, communications, and media systems. We plan to utilize his skills in developing better technologies for our audience.

We strive to help diverse communities with our products. As such, we want to include diversity in our own staff—that's why we're striving to hire team members with diverse backgrounds and experiences. 

One of our team members, Yvonne Khamati (director at SolarFi), is the youngest Ambassador that Kenya has ever had and is now Kenya’s head of Chancery and deputy permanent representative to the Kenya Mission to the United Nations Office in Nairobi (UNON). UNON comprises all UN offices in Nairobi plus UNEP and UN-HABITAT. she serves as the treasurer of Yimbo Professional Union Three years after, she earned positions a Foreign Service post as Deputy African Union Ambassador following negotiations by her party leader Musikari Kombo in 2005.  She began her political career officially at 20. In 2014 Khamati was ranked top 20 most powerful women in Africa.

Our heal of health is Dr. Sam Oboche Agbo is a Public health expert and Child Specialist with a strong background and work experience in Epidemiology; Primary Health Care, UHC, Health Policy and Financing and Business management in Africa and the UK. Dr. Agbo is chief of health and child survival and development for UNICEF, where he is responsible for planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of integrated management of childhood illness, immunization, and emergency preparedness and response. Agbo’s experience includes 16 years in various roles at UNICEF and over 30 years on the front lines in the fight against polio. He previously worked as head of health and HIV at Save the Children, as a community health officer with the World Health Organization (WHO), as an independent policy and health advisor in the UK, and as head of health for Merlin. He is an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow, and a technical advisor at SolarFi.

Another team member, Lai Yahaya (director), is an energy, infrastructure, and development adviser to senior policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa. He was most recently Senior Special Assistant to the President in Nigeria, with responsibility for Policy and Strategy. He was previously Team Leader of the Senior Advisors Group of the US government Power Africa initiative, working to provide advice to serving government leaders on how best to navigate and drive power sector reform in sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, he was also formerly Team Leader of the Facility for Oil Sector Transparency and Reform (FOSTER), a donor-funded initiative designed to support the restructuring of the oil and gas sector in Nigeria.

We are applying to Solve because we want to be apart of the solution to making issues like diversity and the climate more visible. 

We take pride in providing clear, precise messages to potential investors. As such, we're continually updating our pitches as they become more specialized.

We are also continuing to prioritize consistency in our marketing strategies, ensuring that our audience makes contact with us on multiple platforms.

For product and service distribution, we are planning on expanding our client base by reaching as many customers and organizations as possible via weekly newsletters. Additionally, we keep an ongoing list of publications to contact prior to events, so that we have organizations to spread news related to SolarFi.

As far as technology, we are continually staying up to date with the best forms of solar power structures, and are consistently searching for key partnerships that will aid in our production of these pods.

We would like to partner with the MIT Solar Energy Initiative. Like the MIT Solar Energy Initiative, we are aiming to speak with policy makers in order to ensure that action regarding the climate crisis happens. We believe that a partnership with such an initiative would be key in terms of making change happen.

Additionally, we would like to partner with representatives and the mayor of New York, the state which SolarFi is headquartered in. Currently, we are forming a partnership with representatives in Texas to ensure that clean technology is utilized in future projects. We would like to encourage a similar situation in New York, with a specific focus on underserved communities.

Through our SolarFi Mobile Clinics, we are actively aiming to address the health and well-being of people in the U.S. However not only will these clinics provide access to medical resources, they will also provide access to an outside environment in which people can benefit from internet access.We believe that our pods encourage a unique blend of nature and technology, encouraging people to enjoy an outdoor atmosphere. Being outdoors can aid in better mental health, as well as rehabilitative efforts for physical ailments.

Our mobile clinics will aim to serve underserved communities specifically. This being said, we want to make our pods available to all communities in need, including refugees. Extremely versatile, these pods can be used to house refugees in addition to acting as medical centers.

Often, underserved communities do not have the resources to specialize in providing opportunities to women which acknowledge their disadvantages, both economic or social. With this in mind, the job opportunities that these mobile clinics introduce will be marketed with a special emphasis to women minorities.

Our pods will incorporate IoT sensors, which will collect data information regarding pod customers, weather and more. This information can be used to improve many aspects of community life, and will help us to create better technology suited towards the needs of the community. For instance, if we know that more teens visit our medical pods, we will ensure to have educational resources and entertainment suited to that audience.

When fully implemented, our solution will aim to have a chain of pods in several disadvantaged communities not only in the U.S., but also in Africa. Our pods will be vital in terms of providing access to teleheath officials in communities in remote locations.