Riders For Health

I wonder if a woman who once raced motorcycles ever imagined herself running an ambulance service in the heart of Africa... Yet that's just what Andrea Coleman is doing.

Andrea is a former motorcycle racer and operations director for Team Castrol-Herron. Her husband, Barry, was a journalist for the Guardian, BBC, and Forbes magazine. Together, they decided to put their knowledge of the motorcycling community to good use. And Riders for Health is the result.

Let me backtrack a bit.

In some parts of the world, getting the medicines people need into their hands is a huge problem. This is particularly true in places where transportation systems do not exist or are unreliable, as in many parts of the vast African continent. There, one health care worker can be responsible for up to 20,000 people spread over many miles of harsh terrain - and many men, women, and children die each day simply because they cannot be reached.

Riders for Health is changing all that. It's a non-profit organization that has established a system of two- and four-wheeled vehicles to take medical personnel and supplies where they are needed. When I wrote about Andrea and Barry's work in my book, We Are The New Radicals, they were already providing three countries - Gambia, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria - with this health-care delivery system.

Today, they're taking giant steps forward.

They've just signed a deal in Gambia to deliver health care services to every Gambian citizen, making Gambia the first country in Africa with universal health care access. The Skoll Foundation (I've been writing about the good works of this organization, started by eBay co-founder, Jeff Skoll) provided Riders a program-related investment to support the initiative.

The result is the Transport Asset Management (TAM) initiative, a vehicle leasing program that includes a fleet of new motorcycles, ambulances, and trekking vehicles, all fully funded and budgeted for over their entire lifespan.

- TAM is a partnership between Riders for Health, the Skoll Foundation, the Gambian Department of State for Health and Social Welfare (DosH&SW), GT Bank and the Global Fund.

- Each health facility will have an ambulance for referrals, a trekking vehicle to facilitate outreach clinics and several motorcycles for individual outreach and public health care workers.

- The vehicles will be wholly owned by Riders, and DoSH&SW will pay for their use on a kilometre-by-kilometre basis.

- The vehicles will be maintained by Riders and when they have reached the end of what Riders considers to be their natural mechanical and economic lives in a fleet operation, they will be replaced with no extra charge to DoSH&SW.

- Riders will be carrying out an extensive monitoring and evaluation programme of TAM, and program staff are currently collecting baseline information for the pre-TAM situation.

This is a great example of a social entrepreneur creating significant large-scale change - national, in this case - and using partners to extend impact. It's an innovative approach to an African-wide challenge and will be an interesting model to watch going forward.

Andrea and Barry are great examples of New Radicals - that is, people like you and me who've found ways to leverage skills acquired in our careers and put them to work on the world's greatest challenges (for more, please see archived articles).

Please share your thoughts about Riders for Health and your own journey toward a New Radical role. I invite you to comment below (if you've never tried it, it's really easy!), or please email me directly at [e-mail].

More about the Skoll World Forum next week.

Comments

[thdblog]

The Riders for Health organization was a 2006 Technology Awards Laureate and it is great to see them get more publicity for the work they are doing. Their efforts to plug holes in health system infrastructure is not considered immediately sexy (like those who work in hot topic areas like microbicides for hiv/aids or microfinance), but it is absolutely critical and essential for long term capacity building and for what they provide - access to health care. There needs to be a greater focus and reward system for organizations like this one - that improve health systems overall and don't cater soley to one disease category.

[lucertola]

The motorcycle racing community takes great pride in the accomplishments of Riders for Health. The charity was started by racers and continues to receive much of its support from fundraisers held at races, something that Andrea Coleman is always careful to acknowledge. (Visit www.dayofstars.org for one such fundraiser to be held at the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix in July.) Racing fans are pleased not only to see the fine work being done by Riders for Health, but to know that motorcyles are being used to perform this work.

[AngieMom57]

I know of an organization, truly non-profit, healthy, happy, honest folks with a small donation base in which every penny is accounted for and making empowering a community in Africa a world citizen effort.

Microfinance, Permaculture, AIDS orphans support, Alternative Energies, Sustainable Building and Malaria Prevention using natural inexpensive homeopathic treatments .

SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS ARE THEIR OWN ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM

Below are two links for Global Resource Alliance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzr38ccQuMo&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-LVBwO3B4o