Barakat Bundle

My organization, Barakat Bundle, is a 100% women-run and volunteer-run organization with big ambitions to give every mother and her newborn an equal chance at life. As a team who has personally experienced the loss of loved ones through pregnancy or childbirth, we think it is unacceptable that mothers and their children continue to die from causes that the world has already solved. We’re dedicated to changing this by providing families in need with our life-saving care and education Bundles (‘Barakat Bundles’).

We currently have NGO partners in India who want to supply our Bundles to families in need, particularly those who have lost access to necessary care due to the worsening COVID-19 situation in India, but we don’t have the funding to manufacture and ship enough Bundles to meet the demand. Elevate funding and expertise would allow us to not only resume manufacturing to meet the current demand, but also set up the robust supply chain and channel partnerships to distribute more than 3,000 Bundles to families in need in the short-term, while giving my team the operational and strategic capacity to focus on developing a more sustainable revenue model for the long-term.

After college, I envisioned myself with a career in finance and started working on the trading floor. It didn’t take long to realize that this wasn’t the field for me. I wasn’t motivated in the ways that I expected and needed to make a change. So, I followed an inkling that led me to study public health at Harvard and found a calling in maternal and child health. In 2015, I learned about the Finnish Baby Box, a box of newborn essentials that doubles as a sleep space and is distributed by the Finnish government for free (conditional on mothers receiving prenatal care). I immediately realized the potential benefits of adapting this concept for South Asia, which faces the highest number of maternal and infant deaths, and Barakat Bundle was born.

My vision is to ensure that no mother or newborn dies from causes that the world has already solved. Barakat Bundle does this by giving mothers and newborns in need access to the lifesaving supplies and education they need to have an equal chance at life. It took 5 years to develop Barakat Bundle and I want to see it in the hands of every family who needs it.

Every year over 4 million infants and almost 300 thousand women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth (one-third and one-quarter, respectively, occur in South Asia). 80% of these deaths are preventable with simple and inexpensive interventions that already exist but the world has not figured out how to distribute them to the communities that need them and encourage their adoption. 

Barakat Bundle has developed a curated Bundle of lifesaving care and educational materials that are critical for mothers and newborns in South Asia during childbirth through the first year of the baby’s life.

Each Bundle includes: 

1) Evidence-based medical items (sterile blade, cord clamp, etc.) that target major causes of mortality and healthcare essentials (thermometer, baby oil, warm clothes, etc.) 

2) Our pictorial, low-literacy ‘Giving Calendar’ which educates the family on hand washing, breastfeeding, danger signs, etc.

3) Our patented, safe-sleep, bamboo ‘Giving Cradle’ with mosquito net which reduces the risk of suffocation and malaria but also generates demand for the Bundle.

Receipt of the Bundle is conditional on mothers giving birth in a health facility to ensure that they have access to proper care during the most dangerous time for mother and baby.

Unlike other interventions that are designed from afar, we spent 5 years designing Barakat Bundle alongside our target population using Human-Centered Design. We interviewed over 100 mothers, fathers, and healthcare workers in rural India  to iteratively co-create a Bundle that would meet their ‘needs’ AND ‘wants’. This process was lengthy but yielded a Bundle that is more likely to be accepted, understood, and used correctly, thus being more impactful at addressing preventable deaths. For example, we developed our patented ‘Giving Cradle’ (which is included in each Bundle) after watching mothers in rural India tie saris across the room to cradle their newborn babies. The cradle provides a safe-sleep solution for newborns, but was designed to match local tastes and has become a key motivator for mothers to accept the Bundle. We continue to collect feedback and strengthen our Bundle.

Furthermore, unlike other interventions which focus on singular causes of mortality, Barakat Bundle addresses the issue comprehensively. Our Bundle targets multiple causes of mortality while simultaneously building the capacity of health workers and empowering mothers. By tackling this challenge in a multidimensional way, we are better able to make significant improvements in preventable maternal and child mortality.

First and foremost, we are on a mission to help marginalized mothers, specifically those from rural, impoverished communities in India. We’re doing so by equipping them with a Bundle of evidence-based supplies and education that are proven to reduce causes of preventable infant and maternal mortality (by up to 74%) and building up the capacity of their community health workers to ensure proper use and adoption. Early data from our partners on the ground indicates that our Bundle, coupled with check-ins by community health workers, has indeed incentivized health facility births and positively influenced hygiene-related behaviors amongst the mothers who received it.

Second, while our primary goal is to reduce preventable mortality amongst mothers and their newborns, studies have shown that society as a whole benefits from more empowered, educated, and equipped families, health workers, and health facilities.

Finally, we strongly believe in creating economic opportunities for the communities that we serve and aim to establish a sustainable, value-based supply chain within India by finding local artisans, women entrepreneurs and low-income communities we can partner with to manufacture and supply Bundle items.