Healthy Entrepreneurs and RestoringVision are awarded the Million Lives Collective / Bayer Foundation Collaboration Grant!

What becomes possible when you combine the strengths of multiple impactful, proven and rapidly scaling innovations...?

Development challenges are complex, dynamic and unpredictable, but when actors collaborate - drawing on their unique resources and skills across sectors - they can be better understood and addressed. To foster such collaboration, this year, the Million Lives Collective in partnership with the Bayer Foundation launched a grant to offer MLC Members the opportunity to establish new collaborations that have the potential to accelerate development impact on SDG 2: Zero Hunger and SDG 3: Good Health & Wellbeing in  Sub-Saharan Africa. 

While the standard of applications was incredibly high,  the grant has ultimately been awarded to Healthy Entrepreneurs and RestoringVision with their proposed project: CHE SEE - Bringing Clear Vision to the Last Mile via a network of trained Community Health Entrepreneurs. The project will combine Healthy Entrepreneurs’ and RestoringVision’s business models to launch a 12-month pilot to reach people earning $2 per day in remote and isolated villages in Kenya and Uganda with eye health services. RestoringVision will work with Healthy Entrepreneurs  to integrate vision screenings and the delivery of eyeglasses into their Community Health Entrepreneurs (CHEs)'s bundle of health offerings. It will also provide training and ongoing technical assistance for setting up vision camps and campaigns for Healthy Entrepreneurs and its CHEs. With this new skillset and commodity in their basket of goods, CHEs will penetrate rural and hard-to-reach areas to bring awareness and education on vision and provide critical access to vision services and corrective eyeglasses to those in need.

Over the next 12 months, the two grantees will receive EUR 100,000 of grant funding, tailored support and technical assistance to test their collaboration model on the ground. Both the Million Lives Collective and Bayer Foundation teams are extremely excited to see where this pilot goes and are optimistic that this will set the stage for a future of cross-sectoral collaboration.

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