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Meet Extreme’s 2019 Project Partners

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Every year Extreme works with amazing partners that provide the initial challenges we work on, support teams during the design process, and facilitate the implementation of resulting solutions. Our 2019 partners are:

Partner - Ampersand-cropRWANDA

Ampersand builds affordable electric vehicles and charging systems for the three million motorcycle taxi drivers in East Africa, starting with Rwanda. By using a battery swap model, they make it cheaper to buy and operate an electric motorcycle than a petrol motorbike. Going electric will already double a driver’s income now, and leapfrog Africa towards a zero carbon future.

They have spent much of their energy as an organization creating the kind of bike that will work for mototaxi drivers. We will be working with them to create a battery swap station that fits with a mototaxi driver’s needs and habits. There are user interaction needs, physical space and process flow design needs, as well as battery handling and allocation needs.

ampersand.solar 

Partner - Burro

GHANA

Burro’s mission is to deliver tools for a better life. They bring products and services worthy of  customer’s hard-earned cash and able to help them to save more and to earn more. From humble origins renting rechargeable batteries in the villages around Koforidua, Burro has grown to offer dozens of innovative products across every region of Ghana. They continue to develop innovative new products for our valued customers. We have two project potentials with Burro:

In northern Ghana, women collect and process naturally growing shea nuts as an income crop. The collection process is arduous and potentially dangerous as nuts are collected from the ground over a large area, snake bites and scorpion stings deter collection in scrub grass, and collected nuts need to be transported back to the village.

Near to Burro’s Headquarters in Koforidua, villagers collect and process palm nuts into oil to sell in the local markets. The process of harvesting and separating nuts is difficult due to the way palm nuts grow. Oil extracting is also a long and challenging process.

burrobrand.biz

Partner - FactoreKENYA

Factor[e] is a venture development firm with a mission to improve lives in the developing world through increased access to sustainable energy and related services. They support early stage entrepreneurs through a unique blend of risk capital and world-class technical resources. Their goal is to find, validate, fund, de-risk, and grow a rich pipeline of social ventures that aim to solve profound global problems.

The challenge we will tackle with Factor[e] involves extending crops’ shelf life so that famers near Nairobi are better equipped to earn high prices for their crops. They access markets via inconsistent middlemen, by taking their own crops to a nearby market, or by using their crops to feed livestock.

factore.com

Lifebox_optETHIOPIA

For the first time in history, you’re more likely to be killed by a surgically-treatable condition than an infectious disease. But around the world, millions of lives are put at risk every year because of unsafe surgery and anaesthesia. Lifebox believe surgery and anaesthesia should be life-saving, not life-threatening. From improving the conditions of obstetric-related surgeries to building global networks through partnerships with local colleagues and charities, Lifebox is the only NGO in the world dedicated to making surgery and anaesthesia safer.

The challenge we will tackle with Lifebox will be how to make it easier for a surgical team to follow the safe surgery checklist, focusing on making gauze or surgical tool count simple and intuitive, given the non-standard and ever-changing nature of surgery in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

lifebox.org

logo_1_miraclefeet

MADAGASCAR

INDIA

Clubfoot affects one out of every 800 children worldwide, making it one of the most common birth defects in the world. In low- and middle-income countries, children living with untreated clubfoot face incredible hurdles their whole lives. Along with stigma and discrimination, they are often left alone and hidden away because the family is ashamed. Because walking is so difficult, they are among the least likely to enjoy the benefits of education and healthcare. Even worse, children with clubfoot are subject to higher risks of neglect, poverty, physical, and sexual abuse. MiracleFeet increases access to proper treatment for children born with clubfoot in low- and middle-income countries through partnerships with local healthcare providers. There are two distinct projects in different locations with this partner.

In Madagascar the Extreme project will be focused on reducing drop-out rates of children currently being treated for clubfoot (which is time intensive & requires multiple follow-ups). Drop-out rates vary widely across clinics and are extremely low in some and quite high in others.  Miraclefeet’s goal is to have 90% of all children who enroll complete casting and tenotomy, and to get 80% of all children enrolled to complete two years of bracing.

In India the Extreme project will be focused on improving systems and tools to support early identification and referral for children born with clubfoot. Miraclefeet’s goal is that 80% of all children who enroll in treatment start before their first birthday and that 70% of all children born with clubfoot in the country are treated. Challenges remain in reaching these ambitious targets, including lack of knowledge of how to properly identify clubfoot, unclear processes for correct referrals to clubfoot treatment centers, incorrect initial treatments, and more.

miraclefeet.org

 

Partner - WARC

SIERRA LEONE 

WARC is a social enterprise with the goal of increasing agricultural production levels through the empowerment and development of the local community. They believe that Africa, in particular Sierra Leone, presents a unique opportunity for new models of smart agriculture that can be both profitable and able to relieve hunger and poverty. WARC carefully choose the crops their farmers produce, ensuring that they are complementary to the soils, the environment, and at the same time integrating harvests to related value-chains, such as poultry and fish farming. Farmers that are expanding their practices based on WARCs support are unfamiliar with how to farm, harvest and store these new crops. In particular, maize, which can be successfully grown before and after the main rice crop in the same soil, needs to be dried before it rots and becomes useless.

www.warcgroup.com

Partner - Noora HealthINDIA

Noora Health’s mission is to train patients and their families with high-impact health skills to improve outcomes and save lives. This award-winning, rapidly scaling healthcare organization is pioneering a new paradigm of healthcare in India. Noora transforms hospital waiting rooms into classrooms and teaches family members health skills to improve patient outcomes and save lives. Fast Company recognized Noora as among the 10 most innovative companies in India. To date, the program has trained greater than 260,000 families across India. In a cohort of patients, the program reduced adult post-surgical complications by 71%, reduced newborn readmissions to hospitals by 42%, and increased the number of highly satisfied patients by 40%.

Over the past several years, Noora Health has meticulously refined their health trainings for patients & family members while they have them in person in the hospital. Currently Noora Health is exploring ways to engage with these patients & family members after they leave the hospital setting to help further prevent re-admissions and avoid post-discharge complications. However setting up a systematic solution remains a challenge due to the complexity of such a diverse audience.

noorahealth.org

logo-rare

 ……BRAZIL…….

Global demand for fish has pushed the oceans to their limits. Rare believes that the adoption of rights-based fishery management systems will help turnaround the oceanic crisis, resulting in transformative impact for both people and nature. Rare’s innovative coastal fisheries resource management solution marries managed access of fisheries with marine reserves. They envision a future in which 100% of coastal fisheries are sustainably managed. And, are committed to working toward this ambition until it becomes reality.

For the Extreme project this year a team will be working with Rare’s Brazil office and helping them to better support fishing communities in the northern State of Para. For these communities a significant source of income is crabbing, in addition to the fishing or other income-generating work they do. Dead crabs can’t be sold, so ensuring crabs are kept alive from catch to market is critical and also a challenge. As many as 40% of crabs die in transit, which is environmentally wasteful and decreases profits for crab fishing families.

rare.org