Step 1: Determine the facts in the situation

• Ethical Issue: How will Lesotho’s community and water sources be respected and not taken advantage of by the researchers who want to access these water sources?
• 10 academic researchers are traveling to Lesotho for 2 weeks to conduct a research study and understand the lifecycle and characteristics of a pathogen found in Lesotho’s water sources to publish in a research publication
  • Lesotho is a small, developing country in Africa
  • To achieve this goal, the researchers need to conduct a simple water test
    • Academic researchers need help from the community in Lesotho to show the different location different members of their community get their water from and where the water is stored
  • The purpose of this research study is to help make the water in Lesotho safer to drink by developing chemical additives
  • The credibility of the research publication depends on the accuracy of the data from the tests conducted in the water sources

Step 2: Define the Stakeholders

• Lesotho’s healthcare system: The sector of Lesotho’s government that is involved in the health system of Lesotho and managing disease or illnesses in the country
• Locals: The people living in Lesotho who are accessing the water sources
• Academic researchers: The 10 researchers who are traveling to Lesotho and will conduct the water tests
• Research community: Scholars, educators, and specialists invested in literary contributions
• Organization: The academic institution or organization the academic researchers are associated with
• Funders: People or organizations who are donating money or funding the project’s expenses to make sure researchers can travel to Lesotho and have the resources to conduct their study

Step 3: Assess the motivations of the Stakeholders

• Lesotho’s healthcare system:
  • Wants credible data about the pathogens to determine what steps to take to improve their community’s health
• Community in Lesotho:
  • Wants to protect their water sources before letting researchers access them
  • Wants to improve the safety of their water sources for their families, but they want to ensure that the researchers will do so
  • Wants to socialize and build relationships with foreigners, and would want to work with researchers and let them have access to water sources
• Academic researchers
  • Wants access to the water sources to learn about pathogens in Lesotho to gain data
  • Wants access to water sources to gain data about pathogen to help Lesotho’s community and make a social impact
  • Wants access to water sources to gain credible data to publish in their publication to further their career and reputation in the academic community
• Research community:
  • Invested in accurate data and methodology from the study of pathogens conducted in Lesotho
• Organization:
  • Wants accurate data from the water sources in Lesotho to protect the credibility of research publications that will be associated with their reputation
• Funders:
  • Has expectations for the academic researchers to have credible data and show results to see that their money is put to good use

Step 4: Formulate 3 alternative solutions

• Solution 1: Have the locals test the water themselves
  • Potential solution
    • The locals will be educated about how to conduct the water tests themselves to make sure their water sources are protected and that they are treated with respect and fairly
  • Ethical principle/code: Virtue Based thinking because the locals will learn about how to conduct their own water tests and have more knowledge of water safety, and researchers will gain data from these water tests
  • Pros
    • The locals will be reassured that their water sources are treated with respect
    • The researchers will have more time to study the pathogen in depth than conduct simple water tests
    • The locals will learn more about the safety of their water sources and the pathogen they desire
  • Cons
    • There has to be time made to educate the community on how to conduct these water tests
    • The locals will use their own time and labor to conduct these water tests, and they will want incentives for this
      • More money will be needed from the funders, and funders might not view this as a productive use of their money
    • Even though the community will be given guidance on the water tests, errors may occur and not be accounted for in the research publication
      • These errors will disappoint the academic research community and not give a good reputation to the organization the researchers are associated with
• Solution 2: Let the researchers do the water testing and inform the locals of what consists of the water tests
  • Potential solution
    • Before the researchers conduct the water tests, they will inform locals of what the tests consists of to get consent to access these water sources
  • Ethical principle/code: Respect for others. The researchers will have respect for Lesotho’s community because they will honestly share them what the water tests consists of to let the community protect their scenery and water sources
  • Pros
    • There is an agreement created by the researchers and locals, which ensures respect for the locals, their opinion, and water sources
    • The locals will gain more knowledge about their water sources and the pathogen that they desire
    • Researchers will be aware of errors they can make to avoid them and be accountable for them by outlining it in their research publication
      • Accounting for these errors will make their data credible, benefitting their and their organization’s reputation
      • Credible data shows the funders that their money they invested was worth it
    • Locals will save time and labor by not conducting water tests
  • Cons
    • Gives too much advantage to the researchers. The locals will give the researchers everything they want to look better to them or create better relationships
    • The researchers will take control of the agreement and only explain what they want to the locals to gain access to water sources
    • The researchers will spend more time doing simple water tests than learning more about the pathogen in depth
    • Funders may want researchers to focus on studying the pathogen rather than conducting the water tests
    • The locals might not want foreigners to invade their water sources, even if they are aware of what the researchers are involved in
• Solution 3: Let healthcare officials of Lesotho test the water sources, supervised by the researchers
  • Potential solution
    • Healthcare officials of Lesotho’s government will test the water sources after the researchers teach them how to conduct these tests. The locals will be informed on what consists of these water tests to ensure these sources are respected
  • Ethical principle/code: Care based thinking. The healthcare officials of Lesotho, researchers, and community in Lesotho will develop a relationship and deeper understand of Lesotho’s water sources while making valuable connections
  • Pros
    • The researchers will spend less time conducting simple water tests and more time learning about the pathogen
    • The locals will feel respected because they will agree to have water tests conducted they way they want to
    • The locals and healthcare officials will gain more knowledge about the safety of their water sources
    • Healthcare officials can use this knowledge to improve water safety in Lesotho
  • Cons
    • Locals might not have a good relationship with the government, so they will not trust healthcare workers to test water sources
    • Errors in water testing might not be accounted for by the healthcare officials, so data will be less credible
    • Healthcare officials will want to be incentivized in some way for their time and labor put into conducting water tests

Step 5: Seek additional assistance, as appropriate

Step 6: Select the best course of action

• The best course of action is solution 2 because it saves time and informs everyone involved in the water tests what is going on to make sure no one should benefit more than the other. Solution 2 saves time because the researchers will do their job in testing the water and they know how to do the procedure, so they do not need to spend extra time teaching others how to conduct multiple water tests. The community will learn and build connections with the researchers, which is a motivator for them to go and show the researchers where the water sources are. Additionally, the researchers and community will also make an agreement. The community will make an informed agreement with the researchers because they will be taught about what consists of each water test. Funders and the organization the researchers are associated with will also benefit from the solution because they will know the experiment is more credible since the researchers themselves are accounting for the water tests, the main source of data
• The disadvantages with solution 2 is that the researchers could only show the benefits of the water tests and may not disclose all details. It is important for there to be a 3rd party in the group to account for the information researchers explain to the community. Another possible consequence is that the community will accept the water tests regardless of what they believe in, just because they want the opportunity to interact with the researchers.

Step 7: (If applicable) What are the implications of your solution on the venture.

• Social: The community is Lesotho will feel safer to drink from their water sources after they look at the results of the water tests and are informed on what consists of their water
• Economic: This solution could bring more tourism and immigration to Lesotho if their water sources are more safe to drink from than neighboring countries
• Environmental: Water testing and using chemical additives in these water sources may pollute the water further, which is bad for environmental conservation and global warming

While trying to develop a low-cost syringe for the developing world context, you (the designer) hit a cross-roads. Constructing the syringe to auto-disable after a single use, an important safety feature, significantly adds to the cost of the design – making it potentially unaffordable for some hospitals and clinics. However, if you don’t add the safety feature, you are enabling the potential for the spread of disease. How do you as a designer proceed?

1. Determine the facts in the situation
   • The goal of our task is to develop an inexpensive syringe for the developing world. The feature we are trying to add on is for the syringe to auto-disable after a single use, but when we add on this feature it makes it expensive and unrealistic for some hospitals and clinics to be able to afford the syringe. This add on feature reduces the potential to spread the disease
2. Define the Stakeholders
   • Hospitals and clinics: They will purchase and use the product
   • Patients: They will be the ones who are receiving the product and its consequences
   • Designers: The people who design the product and its features
   • Manufacturer: The company who makes the product and distributes it to hospitals and clinics
3. Assess the motivations of the Stakeholders
   • Hospitals and clinics: They want patients to be reassured that the product is safe and want the product to be affordable to purchase it to use with patients
   • Patients: They want to be reassured that the product they are using is safe and of good quality
   • Designers: Their reputation for future sales is affected by the design and quality of the product
   • Manufacturer: Their reputation for future distribution is also affected by how the product is perceived by the community receiving it
4. Formulate (at least three) alternative solutions
   • Solution 1: Design the product with the safety feature and increase the price
     • The product with the safety feature will be more reassuring to patients, because they will be more appealed towards going to hospitals that offer this syringe for use. However, the population that benefits from the syringe’s safety features will be higher class because they will be going to hospitals and clinics that offer more expensive services. These hospitals will need to have a flexible budget and a lot of funds to purchase these syringes for use. So even though there will be higher demand to use the syringe among higher economic class patients, most patients who might need it in the developing world will not have access to the product at all.
   • Solution 2: Design the product without the safety feature to make it more affordable
     • The product without the safety feature will be less reassuring to patients, but this hesitation could disappear because of the demand to use the syringe for health reasons. Patients who have more money may not use this product, but in the developing world making the product more affordable is key to have the majority of the population use it
   • Solution 3: Redesign the product completely to find a way to make the product safer without having to increase the price
     • The product can be redesigned to integrate a new safety feature with a new design, but this might be more expensive for the people investing in paying designers to spend more time redesigning the product. Additionally, the designers most likely already considered many materials and designs for the syringe, so the product might not be as different and the price might not change as much anyway, which would not be time efficient
5. Seek additional assistance, as appropriate
   • To use the product without the safety feature, it would be useful to have a company to help teach the hospital on how to use the product to lower the risk of spreading the disease
6. Select the best course of action
   • The best course of action is to use the syringe without the safety feature because there are precautions that can be taught to lower the risk of spreading diseases. If the product is affordable, it will generate more demand from hospitals of all budgets to purchase the product, and increase its use among patients. However, the inexpensive cost of the syringe comes with other consequences.
   • Without this safety feature, there is a higher risk that patients who use the syringe will reuse it. Reusing the syringe is appealing because it would increase the value and use of the syringe, which could spread the disease more. To prevent reuse of the syringe, doctors face the challenge of having to monitor the syringe use more carefully. Although this monitoring does not come at a cost, it uses more time that doctors might not have with so many patients.
7. What are the implications of your solution on the venture?
   • Economic: More hospitals and doctors will be able to purchase the syringe, which will allow more patients who need it to be able to access it due to its less expensive cost
   • Social: Because this syringe does not have a safety feature, it may lead to the disease spreading more among the patient’s community
   • Economic: There will be a higher demand for the syringe because more hospitals will be able to afford it, thus increasing the profit for manufacturers of the syringe since they will have more sales

Refine the detailed income statement for your venture for two years (at six month intervals) or a more appropriate time scale. Explicitly state the assumptions that underlie your financial model.

Income Statement: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yq3ZQ3kK9MLOXV2PaozkikcXMM_1Lj37P_1Wl8RNGCQ/edit#gid=1922107350

Please click the link for the most detailed information. The assumptions below are summarized using information from the document above. 

Assumptions:

• Sales Projections: Period is 160 days each, each muffin is being sold for SLL1500, 500 units of each product will be sold per day, products will be sold at the bakery and at kiosks
  • Period 1: 
    • 500 muffins/day in Makeni 
    • Revenue = SLL120,000,000
  • Period 2: 
    • 1,000 muffins/day in Makeni, 500 muffins/day in Freetown Location 1 
    • Revenue = SLL360,000,000
  • Period 3: 
    • 1,200 muffins day in Makeni, 1000 muffins/day in Freetown Location 1,500 muffins/day in Freetown Location 2  
    • Revenue = SLL648,000,000
  • Period 4: 
    • 1,500 muffins/day in Makeni, 1500 muffins/day in Freetown Location 1, 1,000 muffins/day in Freetown Location 2 
    • Revenue = SLL960,000,000
• COGS:
  • Raw materials (ingredients) = SLL156/Unit
    • 500 units of each product will be produced per day = SLL78,000/Day

• Production costs = SLL485/Unit
  • 500 units of each product will be produced per day = SLL242,500/Day
• Helpers’ Wages = SLL5,823,000
  • ~2 Helpers/500 Muffins
• Bakery Specialist Wages = SLL8,734,500
  • 1 additional specialist per location (bakery already has 1, so we will have a total of 2 per location and only have to pay the additional one ourselves)

• Operating Expenses:
  • Supervisor salary per period is SLL38,820,000
  • Supervisor associate salary per period is SLL7,277,031

Refine the Business Model for your venture based on your revenue model. You may use the Osterwalder BMC to refine your business model but prepare one or more visuals that explain how your venture will work and accomplish your BHAG.

Business Model

The graphic below shows how our venture is going to work. The supervisor and supervisor associate oversee all activities – setting up manufacturing, building partnerships, looking at social and economic outcomes in long term. Betteh Bakery will have helpers who are in charge of purchasing and processing ingredients, while the specialist ensures the muffin recipe is done to completion. Muffins can be purchased at the bakery directly, at kiosks the bakery will be setting up throughout the city, or through the street vendor network. Through those distribution methods, we will be able to reach communities.

Develop an M&E plan for your venture.

• Clearly list all assumptions.
• Identify short-term and long-term success metrics.
• Identify specific methods to measure the metrics.

In order to succeed in monitoring and evaluating our venture, we have split success metrics between sales and reduced malnutrition. Our long-term metric is successfully decreasing the malnutrition rate in Sierra Leone by 13% in five years, so the rate goes from 38% to 25%. Our metrics for success in the short term are dependent on our sales. If we are able to achieve our sales projections, we will succeed in terms of business operations. In order to do this, we have to hire a supervisor, supervisor associate, baking specialists, and bakery helpers. By dividing the laborious aspect of our venture between bakers and helpers, we will be able to have the employees necessary to work in producing the food products, and the supervisor will monitor our progress over time. Newtrition helpers will assist in sourcing and processing ingredients through peeling and cutting vegetables, and other labor-intensive tasks. Baking specialists will be responsible for working inside Betteh and baking the muffins.

 In order to keep track of our sales, our supervisor will oversee how many muffins we are able to sell from our initial production number of 500. Since we will be selling muffins from the bakery and through market kiosks we set up, the supervisor will be responsible for distributing muffins amongst our different sale locations and tracking overall sales. They will also be responsible for marketing our product. The supervisor associate will be responsible for shadowing and assisting the supervisor so that when we are able to expand into a different area such as Freetown, they understand the nature of the work they must put in to succeed. Once we can track our sales, we will be able to gauge the frequency behind the consumption of the muffins prior to scaling. Though our venture is primarily focused on reducing malnutrition, we have to establish a system that allows our muffins to become consumed regularly and gain desirability as we scale and our venture becomes more well known. Through achieving this first assumption, we can proceed to measure the long term metric of reduced malnutrition through collecting periodic data analysis of the change in micronutrient deficiencies once we have steady-state operations. 

Through our partnership with World Hope, we will leverage their connections to government affiliates and health clinics to designate a data collector who will aid in providing and managing testing for future Newtrition students to analyze. With an increase in sales, we can assume that there is an increase of consumption of our products; this positive trend can be used to determine consumption habits and understand if we are reaching our target demographic of children under 5. We can approach this through conducting monthly screenings through the communities we have set up bakeries and kiosks within. As we are able to screen and inform mothers about their children’s health, we can promote our product as an affordable method of feeding their children with the nutritional value they need for healthy development. Logging the mothers who arrive with their children will allow us to maintain a record of the success of our products; weight gain and gradual health development, and help us get a sense of the effectiveness of our products.

Develop a detailed income statement for your venture for two years (at six month intervals). Explicitly state the assumptions that underlie your financial model.

Income Statement: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yq3ZQ3kK9MLOXV2PaozkikcXMM_1Lj37P_1Wl8RNGCQ/edit#gid=1922107350

Please click the link for the most detailed information. The assumptions below are summarized using information from the document above. 

Assumptions:

• Sales Projections: Period is 160 days each, each muffin is being sold for SLL1500, 500 units of each product will be sold per day, products will be sold at the bakery and at kiosks
  • Period 1: 
    • 500 muffins/day in Makeni 
    • Revenue = SLL120,000,000
  • Period 2: 
    • 1,000 muffins/day in Makeni, 500 muffins/day in Freetown Location 1 
    • Revenue = SLL360,000,000
  • Period 3: 
    • 1,200 muffins day in Makeni, 1000 muffins/day in Freetown Location 1,500 muffins/day in Freetown Location 2  
    • Revenue = SLL648,000,000
  • Period 4: 
    • 1,500 muffins/day in Makeni, 1500 muffins/day in Freetown Location 1, 1,000 muffins/day in Freetown Location 2 
    • Revenue = SLL960,000,000
• COGS:
  • Raw materials (ingredients) = SLL156/Unit
    • 500 units of each product will be produced per day = SLL78,000/Day

• Production costs = SLL485/Unit
  • 500 units of each product will be produced per day = SLL242,500/Day
• Helpers’ Wages = SLL5,823,000
  • ~2 Helpers/500 Muffins
• Bakery Specialist Wages = SLL8,734,500
  • 1 additional specialist per location (bakery already has 1, so we will have a total of 2 per location and only have to pay the additional one ourselves)

• Operating Expenses:
  • Supervisor salary per period is SLL38,820,000
  • Supervisor associate salary per period is SLL7,277,031
• EBIT:
  • Corporate tax rate in SL is 30% (https://tradingeconomics.com/sierra-leone/personal-income-tax-rate)

Identify two SPECIFIC funding sources for the design phase of your project and two SPECIFIC funding sources for the dissemination (implementation / distribution / commercialization) phase of your project. For each funding source, explain why this is a good fit for your project, and what SPECIFIC aspect of your project might the funding source support.

Design: 

• Food Systems Vision Prize (Grant of $200,000) if we win. We are currently semi-finalists.
  • FSVP could aid in giving us the initial funding to cover short term expenses necessary to kickstart our venture; bike and fuel for transportation, kiosks for selling our products at market, wages for our initial employees and laborers, food production equipment such as dehydrators, mills, and blenders, and packaging materials. Through the business plan we have created, being able to conduct our fieldwork with having this amount of fundraising will significantly aid in gathering the people and items necessary to make our venture run after our fieldwork.
•  Lehigh University
  • Since we have yet to establish anything concrete in Sierra Leone, part of the design phase funding towards the venture must come from the University and GSIF Malnutrition researchers. Since we do not currently have a food design specialist, it is up to us to understand the needs of Sierra Leoneans and what resources we have to work with over there. For now, we are responsible for translating our research and into experiments with recipes that are affordable, nutritious, and flavorful according to us. Using resources like the internet, we can calculate the nutritional value of our products as well as being able to order supplements that our recipes may require, which can be hard to source during fieldwork and in Sierra Leone in general. GSIF/Personal funds are more expendable than in Sierra Leone, therefore our investment in our design helps mitigate the costs we may incur when trying to implement our ideas in fieldwork and for our employees after we leave.

Dissemination:

•  World Hope International 
  • Through our partnership with World Hope, our overhead costs are significantly reduced because of having the space of Betteh Bakery to work within. Since they cover utility and rent costs, we are able to keep production costs low meanwhile having the added benefit of branding and trust through our partnership. World Hope / Betteh Bakery carry more weight in Makeni than Lehigh might; through the credibility we gain, we are able to work within the established network and trust World Hope has with the community, making it easier to sell and spread word about our products.
•  Lehigh University
  • When we go to Sierra Leone, we will be responsible for bringing ingredients and equipment such as the dehydrator, cooking instruments, and mill to be able to arrive ready to instruct our bakers how to create our recipes. Before our venture begins to sell products, we are responsible for covering the initial costs of goods sold. Additionally, to begin advertising our products beyond just word of mouth, bringing marketing supplies such as stickers will depend on us because it will be difficult to begin spreading awareness of the Newtrition venture without some kind of visual to keep us in the minds of our customers beyond the time they consume our products.

Identify five specific partnerships that you need to forge to advance your project forward with the ultimate goal of positively impacting at least one million people. Describe exactly how that partnership might help you achieve scale and why that entity might be willing to work with you.

1. Mothers and parents of children in Sierra Leone: if we receive support from the community, they will keep us in business. Without them, there is no purpose to our project. They are the consumers. They can help in marketing our products through Word-of-Mouth and social media apps like Whatsapp, and they might be willing to work with us because our goal is to help them and the rest of their community. We want to establish an overall improved well-being in their health. 
2. People in the community who have some experience or potential in running a social enterprise. We have to create partnerships with people who are willing to bring our venture further and run the management operations. Newtrition is a legally structured, social enterprise that will need a team of people to manage central operations after Lehigh exits their role in the project. Having this team of people will advance the project further because they will help expand the project and create more opportunities for children with malnutrition to access our products 
3. People in the community who are willing to work to bake our food products, people who are looking for jobs. Although our venture is not focused on creating new jobs for people in Sierra Leone, one of our goals is to make connections with people who can work to produce food products. This is important because we need a mass population to be involved in production to be able to make a higher production of food. A larger production is important because as our venture grows and word of mouth spreads, we will have more mothers and families who will want to purchase our products, and we have to keep up with demand and increase production to get our products to everyone
4. We need to make connections with people who are willing to participate in our venture and are data personnel. These people are important for our venture because they can work with the health departments in Sierra Leone and obtain data about malnutrition. We need this data because it will help us see if our venture is actually making progress and an impact on malnutrition. We can also use this data to identify which cities or areas of Sierra Leone are still undergoing severe malnutrition. Identifying these areas will help us target those villages so we can provide our products to those who really our products to ward off malnutrition
5. We need to maintain our partnership with Betteh Bakery. We are using their bakeries to use their materials to make our products, so the people we hire in charge of making our foods can use their facilities. Our partnership with Betta bakery is important because without them, we would not have the materials for food product production. Our partnership with them is a foundation of our venture, and the use of their materials will allow our venture to continue food production that will help millions of people access our products through sales

Business Model:

Blog Post 10.docx

Ten practical lessons from the business (revenue) models of ventures we reviewed today (or others you research) as they relate to your venture.

1.  Focusing on training workers and giving them the tools they need to succeed in your business opens your labor market to anyone willing to work
2. Open Hiring Models are an efficient way around attracting unskilled laborers who may not have conventional job qualifications.
3.  Providing products that work around potential customer constraints such as space or time creates inclusivity and simplifies the processes necessary for customer use, which increases the market outreach.
4.  Brand associations aid in boosting the recognition and market a venture is able to pitch itself toward.
5.  Establishing a distribution standard allows a business to track and manage consistent returns.
6.  Encouraging self-sufficiency by allowing workers to take initiative to network and train others allows for the venture’s outreach to expand beyond its point of origin.
7.  An open source business model like Barefoot College’s allows for people in different countries to be able to replicate and expand the venture.
8. Partnering with community leaders allows for target customers to get the products and services that are aimed at empowering them meanwhile being distributed by trustworthy people.
9. Reinvestment initiatives like Reel Gardening’s buy one donate one model allows customers to have a part in helping expand the venture’s outreach.
10.  Tailoring production to the specific needs of communities ensures that a product can have its intended impact throughout a range of different conditions.

End to end solution

During production, hiring women for the bakery will be key for placing the responsibility of production in the hands of the customers we seek to impact and empower. Their judgement and expertise coupled with partnerships with different farmers and vendors for the ingredients and equipment needed will establish a relationship to keep our producers supplied with what they need for consistent, quality products. Wholesale market purchases will allow the bakery to get the cheapest price on ingredients depending on the number of vendors who have purchased our products. Our vendors purchasing from the bakery in wholesale quantities will allow the bakery to profit off its production yield meanwhile being able to sell the products individually at market at a profitable price. The faster our vendors are able to sell our products, the more incentive the bakery will have to produce more, which will allow us to begin scaling our production and maximizing profits for our workers to benefit from as costs drop and our market grows.

Question #1 is in the following link:

Malnutrition

List ten lessons from the Business and Operations model of the Aravind Eye Hospital.

The complex issue is approached with a simple operation; was expanded through setting up a network of eyecare centers and using training and outreach camps to build up staff and to begin finding patients in need of treatment.

Rather than worrying about financing the project, emphasis was placed on getting to know patients and village locals to build a relationship on trust rather than approaching paternalistically. By seeing oneself in the people they are helping, they are able to operate on empathy.

By branding eye care as an issue that “sees” no difference in demographics with a mantra/belief, the venture is universal for patients and providers alike to be involved with. 

Establishing ownership in small communities empowers people to take responsibility and come together; the locals take the initiative to address and make others aware of the problem and solution, making it easier for eye care personnel to assess, diagnose, and treat patients at one time. 

Catering to the obstacles people have such as transportation and organizing the different levels of eyecare necessary for patients increases the efficiency of the system and eases the process patients must go through to be treated; if these are uniform, eye care services can treat more patients with less room to get off schedule.

Working with available equipment and fixing the price at a relatable, affordable price point makes the service inclusive for the people who need it the most.

Lowering the cost of communication and necessary face-to-face interactions through telecommunication prevents overwhelming, and for patients and providers alike to get the information they need in a timely fashion.

By charging only those who can afford the service at market price, and providing the service for free creates competition that ineffective systems cannot compete with. A system that is more productive and affordable than others can make up for the profits other systems lose out on.

Emphasizing domestic manufacturing and sourcing of employees and materials creates sustainability, which will lower the cost of services as the business is able to scale.

As the business scales, continuing to focus on quality and addressing an issue that ranges across all demographics fosters consistency and sustainability that can be emulated by other countries and systems with similar obstacles.

Does your work require IRB approvals? If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy. If No, explain why you don’t need IRB approval and identify situations when you might need IRB approval. 

Our project does not require IRB approval because:

1. We are working with a vulnerable population
   1. Pregnant women and children in Sierra Leone
2. Identifiable public information
   1. According to the federal regulations, human subjects (pregnant women and children) are living human beings about whom an investigator obtains data through interaction or intervention with these individuals
3. Informed consent 
   1. In our project, we will have interviews with women and children; we will have to explain the purpose of the research to them beforehand, in order for them to understand the purpose of our project 
   2. The interviews are completely voluntary; it will obtain verbal consent 
4. Questionnaires
   1. The questionnaire is split into two sections. The first section is for each mother to get an understanding of her life, her children’s life, and her family’s eating habits, and the second section is split into questions about each of the three recipes and the food that each child tries is dependent on their age.

The only time where we will require IRB approval would be if:

1. Risk of harm in social and behavioral sciences
   1. Invasion of privacy 
      1. Asking if whether or not women have had abortions 
   2. Breach of confidentiality 
   3. Study procedures 
      1. Risks are specific for time, situation and culture 
2. If our study assigns human subjects to study activities based on an undesirable or unflattering physical characteristics as assessed by members of the research team 

Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations. What supporting evidence will you provide for each point? How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?

1. Introduction to Malnutrition in Sierra Leone/Prevention of Stunting for Children 
   1. Give quick statistic on overall malnutrition in the world

1. 1. Narrow it down by discussing the issue in Sierra Leone
      1. Statistic on malnutrition in kids and how it leads to stunting
         1. Statistics provide credibility
            1. They also provide a greater understanding of the rates of malnutrition/stunting, diseases and other catastrophes in Sierra Leone 
      2. Talk about factors that cause malnutrition
         1. Lack of nutrient dense foods
         2. Economic, political and geographical barriers in SL that prevent people from receiving sufficient amounts of life necessities 
            1. HIV/AIDS (deadly infectious diseases), malaria in women; high mortality rates; poverty and infrastructure (has kept clinics and medical hospitals from helping the community)
         3. Kids aren’t breastfed – many are given water instead
            1. Causes malnutrition at a very young age 
      3. Talk about how mothers are discouraged from seeking help because they are blamed for the malnutrition in kids and are sometimes shamed for it
         1. Although many mothers are not educated, or have no form of education; some of these mothers have no background on breastfeeding, which is worrisome for the health of their children 
2. Our Approach
   1. Developing nutrient dense foods that fit within the tastes of the community
      1. Muffins
      2. Pudding
      3. Bouillon Cubes
      4. Peanut Butter Recipes
   2. Taste Testing in SL
      1. Have people try our different products and let us know if they like it or not, and give us any other feedback on it
      2. Provide certain explanation on the purpose of our research to children and mothers in order for them to further understand our project
         1. We will be provided with a translator 
      3. Taste-testing– For the children, we will observe their facial expression and reaction to each food. For children 18 months and younger, we will rely on behavioral observations and the help of their mothers to gauge whether or not they like each food they try.
   3. Expand on Relationships in SL
      1. Through communication and individual contribution to the community of Makeni 
      2. Employees at World Hope International (WHI) will not be conducting research, but they will help us connect with community health workers (CHWs) and community members. The pre-established relationship will help us build trust with members of the community.
      3. Current partnership with Bettah bakery: joint partnership with World Hope and local Wesleyan church
3. Larger Context
   1. Provides work for bakers and vendors
   2. Adds to their economy – purchase of ingredients, new products in their market
   3. Helps to provide vitamins and increase health in children and women through the use of preservatives in the food products
      1. Prevent vitamin deficiencies 
4. What’s Already Been Done
   1. Muffins are in late stage
   2. Pudding is in late stage
   3. Relationships with bakers and vendors already established
   4. Research further preservatives to use in muffins and pudding
5. Work Done and Planned this Semester
   1. Done – N/A Yet
   2. Planned
      1. 3-4 new recipes
         1. Puddings and muffins 
      2. Figuring out which preservatives to use
         1. Acid Ascorbate and Soda water to preserve freshness and color in the food products 
         2. Run trials for these preservatives and figure out the packaging for these foods 

List five compelling take-aways from the Art of the Start. 

1. It is critical to have a mantra for your organization – allows for everyone to have a core mindset

1. 10, 20 30 – Presentations. The 10, 20, 30 technique is important to make sure that the audience knows we are knowledgeable about our presentation
   1. 10 slides in pitch
   2. 20 minutes
   3. 30 pt smallest font 

1. Don’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do
   1. There is no way you can expect someone to invest in you if you wouldn’t be a user of your own project/product

1. It is important for our team to create our Milestones, Assumptions, and Tasks (MAT). If we learn to use MAT consistently, it will allow us to understand our project goals. MAT will help us divide our tasks among our group evenly which will allow us to be more efficient while working on our project milestones that will lead towards the achievement of our goal.

1. It is important to have a team with a diverse set of skills. The more diverse our group is, the more perspectives we will have to be able to analyze and reflect on our project to make more improvements to our work. Different people with different skills can have different tasks in our project, and all these skills combined will result in a successful project and presentation.

Articulate your value propositions for your diverse customer segments. FYI: Value propositions should only be one sentence

For mothers who want to ensure the food safety of their children, our muffins and puddings allow children to receive the micronutrients they need on a daily basis, all while enjoying a tasty snack. 

For mothers who want to add health benefits to the meals they cook, our fortified bouillon cubes compliment every dish while adding nutritional value that is not available in other competitors like Maggi.

Discuss your Total Available Market and Total Addressable Market. List all your assumptions and hypotheses.

• Total Available Market: 
  • 470,000 children in Sierra Leone that are malnourished and/or stunted

• Total Addressable Market: 
  • Let’s assume that we can reach 1% of the market initially – realistic assumption because we are starting in one region before expanding to others.
  • 470,000*0.01= 4,700 children
  • This is realistic because our past taste testing showed that 98% of mothers in SL would buy our product to feed to their children. We cannot reach the entire country at once, which is why the 1% assumption was made. We hope that in the coming years, our market share grows and we reach more kids. The more kids we reach, the lower malnourishment and stunting will be prevalent in SL. Our product competes on value, not price (which is affordable), so it strengthens our presence in the market. There are no comparable products currently in the food market, which also helps in reducing the elasticity of our demand. This leaves people who want to make sure their kids are nourished properly with no other choice than to purchase our product.

Summarize and report on the results of the SKS exercise. 

For our SKS, we decided we are going to start doing more team-bonding exercises because they provide everyone with positive reinforcement. We all enjoyed learning what other people’s perspectives of us in the project were, and it definitely provided us all with reassurance and made us each confident we were doing our part on the team. We also decided that we are going to start becoming more involved with past members. Our team has 2 members who did the project last semester, and 4 new members who just joined. Since we are new members, we see each other more often because of the Tuesday seminar. It seems there is a slight disconnect between us and the past members. Each person does their part, but the dynamic between the 4 new members is different from the dynamic of the team as a whole, clearly because the new members spend more time together. We want to work on tightening this divide.

We want to keep the team dynamic between us 4, and extend it to the rest of the team. We all get along really well and enjoy each other’s company. I am so glad to have become friends with my new team members, and definitely want to keep the love we all share for each other. Our self-motivation is apparent in our ability to focus on our roles and how we are able to come together to address concerns and new directions in our research. We have began to encourage one another to lead more, so we have a healthy balance of supporting one another.

We want to stop simply giving updates at our meetings and teach each other more. A majority of our weekly meetings with our advisor are focused on simply giving updates, but they are not as in depth as they could be. If we each become more in depth with our updates, the rest of the team will become more knowledgeable on each aspect of our project and have a better holistic understanding of it. To change this, we intend to begin taking more time during team meetings to teach one another about the work we have accomplished rather than just updating one another. 

Develop a detailed Collaboration Plan for your team clearly articulating your Goals (Small g and Big G), Roles, Procedures, and Relationships.

Our big goal as a team is to begin to teach and inform each other about our individual work in the project. We are all very dedicated to our individual work, and have done a lot of research within our work individually. In many cases, if our other team members knew about the information we learned about, it would greatly benefit their own research too. Additionally, it is important for us to be aware of what everyone is working on to have a more well-rounded knowledgeable background of our project. Our small goals as a team include communicating more with past team members. Prior to the trip, it would be helpful to establish better relationships so we can understand their approach and how we can prepare ourselves for potential obstacles they experienced. The questions they gained from their fieldwork and time researching can help guide the goals we pursue and better prepare us for getting the answers we need to push the venture forward.

Our roles in our team consists of having small projects as subsets of our big project goal, which is to alleviate childhood malnutrition in Sierra Leone. Each one of us is working on one specific thing to contribute to our project as a whole. Samantha is working on developing new recipes to test during our summer fieldwork, Gabby and Evelyn are leading our application for the Food Systems Vision Prize to win a grant, Robert is working on developing the recipe for moringa-fortified bouillon cubes, and Kayla is working on writing the research paper based on past fieldwork. We proceed with our goals by developing a timeline of when we want to complete different tasks to complete these smaller projects within our malnutrition project as a whole. As a group, we hold each other accountable for completing these goals. Our relationship as a team is a strength of ours; we have a great group dynamic while working on our project together and outside the project, however we want to continue to improve our relationships in our team by teaching one another about our work to ensure we are knowledgeable beyond our individual roles and prevent knowledge gaps from forming between one another. Although our dynamic places transparency as one of our core values, teaching creates security for our group’s ability to speak on the efforts we have put forth, fosters the opportunity for us to suggest potential revisions or topics for one another to explore and anchors the groundwork we have all put in for one another. Despite now being separated physically from one another, we have more incentive to be each other’s checks and balances.