Mamasanté Calling!

Freedom from Hunger is turning door-to-door sales into an innovative bridge between rural villages and health-protection products that families need to fight common diseases.

Imagine living in a remote village where basic health-protection products such as insecticide-treated nets, condoms, and oral rehydration solution are nowhere to be found...even if you have the money to buy them!

"Mamasantés" (like the one pictured above on the left) are neighborhood sales ladies who bring vital health care products such as mosquito nets, oral rehydration solution and contraceptives to rural villages that are beyond the reach of retailers.

Freedom from Hunger brings powerful self-help tools such as microfinance and lifeskills training to women's groups in rural and even remote villages. The proven impact is that women earn more money and use their new knowledge to safeguard their families' health. But what happens when a woman learns how to use an insecticide-treated net to safeguard her family against malaria and earns enough money to buy the net but the nets are nowhere to be found?

That's just what happened to Janet Aquah in rural Ghana. Janet joined her village women's group more than two years ago and has been making the most of Freedom from Hunger's Credit with Education program ever since. Her family is no longer hungry and she has a sustainable business that pays for her children to go to school. But all is not well. When she learned about malaria, she wanted to get an insecticide-treated net to protect her children, but they weren't available in her village. "I have lost two children to malaria. They died in my arms." She said, "I can have no peace of mind. I am afraid for my children." Click here to learn the rest of Janet's story.

In rural villages like Janet's, nonprofit organizations stop by from time to time to hand out nets or even pass out oral rehydration salts. But the visits are irregular and the supplies are too few to reach everyone in the village. Clinics try to provide needed supplies but are hampered by unpredictable deliveries and government funding. Retailers and vendors who regularly sell health-protection products don't usually venture into rural areas where they cannot ensure profits -- so they stick to urban areas.

To provide a sustainable and reliable solution, Freedom from Hunger launched an initiative called "MicroBusiness for Health" now being piloted in Ghana. This truly innovative strategy is modeled after a door-to-door or party-based sales approach, in which a neighborhood woman becomes the local sales representative for a line of products.

Affectionately known in the program as "Mamasanté" (or "mama-health"), this friendly woman not only sells basic health-protection products, she is also trained to provide advice on her inventory, ensuring her customers and neighbors use the products properly. A Mamasanté might even give a little party where she can both sell her products and demonstrate how to hang an insecticide-treated net; talk about the signals of dehydration and when to give oral rehydration solution to a child with diarrhea; or even how condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Importantly, the products Mamasanté carries are small and affordable, responding to the realities of what poor families can afford at any given time. Click here to learn more about the products sold by a Mamasanté.

Neighborhood (or village-based) sales are also a sustainable enterprise for the Mamasanté. Freedom from Hunger is using its many years of experience in microfinance and microenterprise training to support Mamasantés with initial loans, training and regular supplies of products. Mamasantés are trained in sales, inventory management and, of course, providing consumer advice on health-protection products. Meet a Mamasanté!

One of Mamasanté's most popular products is reading glasses. A simple, but powerful item many of us take for granted, reading glasses can extend a woman's ability to earn money for her family for many years. As their eyesight grows blurry with age, many women find it difficult to continue the enterprises of their youth (such as sewing, craft-making and other fine work). Reading glasses would help, but like so many valuable products, they can rarely be found in rural areas.

With the partnership of the Scojo Foundation, a nonprofit social enterprise, Freedom from Hunger is training Mamasantés to offer a line of quality reading glasses and to fit their customers properly for better vision. The glasses restore not just vision, but also productivity, ensuring that the family doesn't suffer as wage-earners age. The glasses also build customer loyalty to the Mamasanté as women find their lives transformed by their ability to continue to earn money.

Freedom from Hunger is piloting MicroBusiness for Health in Ghana where our goal is to have a friendly, local Mamasanté calling on 80% of the rural villages by the year 2011. Freedom from Hunger also plans to take the initiative to other nearby countries that face the same challenge of getting regular supplies of needed health-protection products to rural villages.

For more information about MicroBusiness for Health, click here.

Freedom from Hunger wishes to thank the Scojo Foundation for their support of MicroBusiness for Health.