Araw-Kalinga Box

Access to reliable electricity is crucial for providing necessary healthcare services, including maternal and infant healthcare. However, in many remote and disadvantaged areas globally, lack of access to reliable electricity poses a significant barrier to delivering necessary healthcare services, leading to preventable deaths and other adverse health outcomes. According to the World Bank, an estimated 733 million people worldwide still lack access to electricity, with the majority living in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

In the Philippines, over 10,875 Geographically-Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas (GIDAs) lack access to reliable electricity, and in 2019, it was reported that more than two million Filipino families and 19,000 barangays nationwide lived without electricity. 

This problem worsens already weak health systems in rural areas. At present, 70% of the Philippine population living in rural areas is still struggling with no or limited access to quality inpatient and outpatient care services. Because rural areas in the country have limited healthcare facilities, inadequate medical personnel, and limited access to healthcare services, patients would have to travel several miles to reach the nearest hospital. This situation leaves thousands of pregnant women and their infants at risk of inadequate or nonexistent healthcare services. In fact, every year, 121 women and 210 infants die in the country due to the lack of access to reliable maternal and infant healthcare services.

The lack of access to reliable electricity leading to inadequate healthcare services in GIDAs is a significant problem that must be addressed. Without electricity, medical professionals are unable to operate necessary medical equipment or provide necessary healthcare services. Additionally, no electricity can lead to inadequate lighting and unsafe living conditions, further exacerbating health risks for pregnant women and infants. Medical professionals struggle to provide necessary maternal and infant healthcare services, leading to a lack of prenatal care, pregnancy complications, and risk of mortality.

Araw-Kalinga Box (AKB) which literally means Sun-Care in the Filipino language is a highly efficient portable kit with solar power technology that can provide maternal and infant health care anywhere. It contains three compartments: a portable ultrasound device, vaccine storage, and medical tools. The first compartment contains a solar-powered ultrasound machine that enables barrio doctors to diagnose pregnant mothers without recommending them to go to a hospital. The second compartment is vaccine storage where perishable medicines can be stored. With this solar-powered cold box, doctors can store perishable medicines such as vaccines longer than existing traditional cold boxes that can only store medicines for a maximum of 48 hours. Lastly, the third compartment contains a space for delivery instruments such as scissors, needle holders, clamps, forceps, and pipettes.

Electricity is essential in providing maternal and infant health care. This is not a problem for people living in urban areas; however, for the 30% of Filipinos who have little to no access to electricity in Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas (GIDA), the lack of a reliable power source may cost lives. Imagine a pregnant mother living in a remote community that is miles away from the nearest hospital. To receive her weekly or monthly prenatal checkups, she would have to spend money on a motorized pump boat to cross the sea or ride a motorcycle to pass through a rocky, mountainous path to arrive at a rural health clinic. Instead of going through this strenuous journey, she would rather stay at home and show up to a barrio doctor a few hours before giving birth. Having no checkups before giving birth is one of the causes why 121 mothers and 210 infants die every year in the Philippines. With our solution, patients in rural areas do not have to travel miles to access healthcare services.

I came from a rural community and a family of community healthcare workers. My Lola was a traditional midwife who, despite having no formal education, had spent most of her life helping pregnant women in their geographically isolated community give birth. My mother followed in her footsteps and went to a university to become a registered midwife. After graduating, she put up a lying-in clinic in the community where we lived. Literally growing up in a maternity clinic, I got exposed to the struggles of my fellow community members in getting the healthcare services they deserve. Most of our patients were from far-flung areas who traveled for long distances and even crossed rivers. As a family in a rural area, my family was not an exception to this problem. When I was 9, my mother and father had to fly to Manila and solicit money from government officials for my father’s heart surgery. Growing up in such an environment and family background, I learned how inaccessible healthcare is, especially to rural communities, inspiring me to advocate for health equity. Additionally, my team members embody the characteristics of a proximate leader as they also are from provinces that have the same struggles as where I came from.

Our team believes in human-centered innovation. We work towards our goal of making healthcare accessible to communities in fragile contexts while making sure the people we are serving are part of the entire process. During the ideation of our solution, we involved our stakeholders. We did several discovery surveys with doctors who had worked in rural communities and immersed ourselves in our target beneficiaries by conducting several on-the-ground community consultations. After doing all these, we understood from their perspective how difficult it is for Filipinos in rural areas, especially mothers and infants, to access quality and affordable healthcare. We found out and experienced how they travel for roughly 3 hours and cross seven rivers to get to the city hospital.

Currently, our solution is serving one rural community, benefiting over 3,000 Filipinos. We continue conducting interviews with the local government unit officials, local medical professionals, and mothers and regularly ask for their feedback to help us develop our solution. We have been doing this to make them feel they are part of the solution and to ensure that we are addressing the problem effectively. This is how we, at Rise Rural Philippines, inclusively work toward solving health inequality in off-grid areas in the Philippines.

Our social enterprise is currently in its pilot stage. With a minimum viable product, our solution currently serves one rural community which benefits approximately 3,000 Filipinos.

I understand that MIT Solve provides an MIT-backed network and nine months of personalized support. I am applying our solution to MIT solve to join this network of impact-minded leaders and overcome the technical and financial barriers our team currently faces and get access to mentorships, especially in terms of business model development. As a social enterprise working on a tech-based solution, it has been a challenge for us to look for local suppliers of affordable electronic and other raw materials. Due to this problem, our materials are outsourced from manufacturers in other countries, making our production cost higher. By being connected to the wide network of MIT Solve especially in the health and energy industry, I believe we would be able to connect with businesses that can potentially be our lifelong trusted partners. As we set our eyes on scaling up to reach more rural communities in the Philippines, we also believe that the funding that MIT Solve provides will help us expand. At the end of this year, we are targeting to reach 6 more off-grid areas which translates to over 20,000 Filipinos getting access to primary care services.

Most importantly, we are applying to MIT to receive coaching and mentorship. As a team of all undergraduate students, we believe that support from experts in highly-respected institutions like MIT would be immensely beneficial to the growth of our organization. We are specifically looking for mentorships in terms of electrical engineering, public health, business development, and leadership. Personally, I have experienced trials and tribulations as a co-founder and the leader of our team. They say doing social entrepreneurship is like birthing a child, and I definitely agree. MIT Solve provides a network of peers that act as a trusted support group for inspiration and guidance. I believe that a network like this will be greatly beneficial to me as a young social entrepreneur and I hope to be of help as well to my peers if our solution gets selected.

After delving into the stories of medical professionals working in off-grid communities, our team found out that the way they are addressing the problem is by recommending their patients travel to the city health office if they cannot be accommodated by the local clinic due to the problem with electricity and lack of medical devices. However, this does not entirely solve the problem, as most patients get discouraged by the additional cost and danger of traveling for miles. There are also instances where medical professionals are faced with on-the-spot emergencies where they have no choice but to attend to their patients immediately, like pregnancy, despite having insufficient resources.

Additionally, our team has identified two competitors who work on making healthcare accessible to rural clinics. Our box is five times lighter so that medical professionals can bring it with them anywhere, especially when doing house-to-house visits, provides more primary care services, and can be powered by solar power and electricity so that medical professionals do not have to worry about running out of electricity. The Philippines has over 10,000 geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, according to the Department of Health. We see our solution as a cost-efficient and effective way to address this problem and close the gap in inequality in these areas, one community at a time.

We at Rise Rural Philippines work to improve the lives of Filipinos in rural communities with the use of innovative tech-based solutions. We also work to help achieve SDG 3, which ensures healthy lives and well-being. For the next year, we aim to promote good health and well-being, decrease mortality among Filipinos, especially mothers, and infants, and prevent the worsening of diseases and illnesses by closing the gap in access to primary care in off-grid areas. By the end of this year, our team targets to sell units to 6 communities, benefitting over 20,000 Filipinos. In the next year, we plan to double this number to 12 communities which translates to over 40,000 Filipinos getting access to primary care. Although the financial impact is not our priority, we project roughly 2,000 USD in revenue.

Over the course of five years, we envision our organization becoming a trusted partner of the Philippine Department of Health and non-governmental organizations in making healthcare accessible to rural areas of the country. We plan to reach 500 communities in the next five years which will mean 1,500,000 Filipinos will have access to the healthcare services they deserve.

Securing meaningful and strategic partnerships is key to achieving our impact goals. We refer to partnerships in production and community engagement as beneficial so that we can produce a sufficient number of units and reach remote areas in the country. We plan to start partnering with small non-governmental organizations and eventually target local government units. Currently, our team is already working with one local government unit and is in talks with a big humanitarian organization to offer our solution to more rural areas. We plan to continue doing this strategy to achieve our short-term and long-term impact goals.

As a solution working to achieve health equity in rural communities, we measure our progress by looking at different key performance indicators (KPIs). One KPI that we have already been monitoring is the number of communities reached by our solution. As an enterprise in the pilot stage, we are already working with one community that pilot tests our product. Over the next months and years, we aim to increase this number.

We also use the UN’s SDG target indicators to measure our progress and success as a social enterprise. We work with local clinics to get the numbers of how many benefits from our product, which falls under the SDG 3.8.1 indicator. We also closely monitor with the help of rural medical professionals maternity mortality, under-five mortality, and neonatal mortality, which are covered by SDG 3.1.2 and 3.1-2 indicators. Overall, our solution aims to help reduce mortality rates in off-grid areas, especially among the most vulnerable sector, women and their children, by making affordable and quality healthcare services accessible.

As a social enterprise, our overall goal is to make healthcare accessible to rural communities in the Philippines. We achieve this by manufacturing our solution which is a solar-powered medical storage box and distributing them to clinics in off-grid areas. These boxes aim to help medical professionals provide healthcare services anytime, anywhere, thereby increasing the number of Filipinos who have access to primary care. After turning to third-party research and customer discovery surveys in our target population, we found out that since off-grid clinics do not have access to electricity, medical professionals are limited in terms of what services they can provide. This, in turn, forces many Filipinos in these places to travel miles to get to the city hospital, or worse, do not consult with a medical professional at all. Our team believes that our activity of providing our solution to these communities will prevent this problem from happening, thereby reaching our long-term impact of achieving health equity in communities in fragile contexts.

Araw-Kalinga Box (AKB) is powered by solar power technology. We identified that, since reliable access to electricity is essential in providing necessary healthcare services, incorporating solar power technology with healthcare services would create something of immense value to rural areas. AKB is a portable box with a lid that has a solar panel. This solar panel is connected to a lithium-ion battery where electricity is stored. The box contains three compartments, with 2 of the compartments being powered by solar power. The first compartment is where portable ultrasound devices and other electric-dependent medical equipment are placed, and the second compartment is vaccine storage for keeping vaccines potent for long hours. Both the first and second compartments are connected to the battery so that users can use them without having to worry about running out of electricity. Lastly, the third compartment contains a space for delivery instruments such as scissors, needle holders, clamps, forceps, and pipettes.

As a social enterprise that promotes inclusive development, we ensure that we also apply inclusivity and diversity within our organization. Our team is diverse in terms of gender, having 2 women and 3 who identify as part of the LGTBQ+ community. We also make sure that, since we work for rural communities, members who come from rural communities are also represented in the team. We also ensure that we cultivate an environment where all members feel involved and valued.

Rise Rural Philippines is a social enterprise that aims to make primary care accessible to off-grid communities in the Philippines through its innovation – a solar-powered medical storage box for medical professionals working in rural areas. We are targeting to sell these units to local government units where rural clinics are under the authority of and to private organizations who are conducting medical missions and outreach programs to remote areas. While local government units and private organizations are what we consider our paying customers, the end beneficiaries of our solution are the Filipinos in rural areas who are struggling to access primary care because of geographical isolation. For so many years, Filipinos in these areas are forced to travel for an average of 3 hours just to get to the city hospital. Because traveling entails danger and cost, many are discouraged to consult medical professionals and get healthcare services. With our innovation, we empower rural clinics so that community members can get the primary care they need in their own community, eliminating travel time and travel costs. While the financial impact is our second priority next to social impact, we sell each unit for USD 360 which has roughly a 25% mark-up. We use this revenue to fund our activities and to serve more off-grid communities.

Our social enterprise follows a hybrid model which means that we fund our activities through two revenue models: selling our products and through sustained donations and grants. We sell our products B2G and B2B. Since clinics in the Philippines are supported by the government, we plan to reach out to local government units to sell our product so that their clinic can use it. Additionally, we also sell to businesses and private organizations whose line of work is in public service and healthcare as well. In fact, our pilot customer is a local government. Currently, we are working with a private organization that is going to buy two units for their two target community. Since our work attracts external stakeholders, we also opened our social enterprise for donations and grants to financially sustain our campaign.

As an early-stage social startup, our team has been joining different innovation competitions both locally and abroad. Since we started in 2020, our team has raised a total of USD 6,225 in equity-free grants and has been recognized by known institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme and the US State Department through the Global Innovation in Science and Technology (GIST). Currently, we have already a minimum viable product and have secured a letter of intent from a non-governmental organization that is interested in buying two units to distribute to 2 rural areas in the Philippines.

Below is the breakdown of funders and monetary amount that our team has received:

• Ashley Lashley Foundation - USD 5,000

• United Nations Development Programme in the Philippines - USD 550

• Prokompas Indonesia - USD 250

• Social Innovation in Health Initiative China - USD 150

• UNIPLAT Switzerland - USD 275