WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

 

Moms Know Best

in Blog  by connie lewin

This year, we celebrated Mother’s Day at our Ngoma production site by inviting our team’s children to tour the facility and enjoy in some special treats. We asked their children what they most appreciate about their mothers, and their responses (and photos) are too charming not to share!

Barbara, age 4

Barbara, age 4

“I like my mother because she buys me puppets and a bicycle.”

Igor, age 8

Igor, age 8

“I am proud of my foster mother (Aunty) because she continuously helps me to improve my class scores and because of her efforts this term I was ranked the third of my class.”

Bella, age 6

Bella, age 6

"I am proud of my mother and my family because they respect me."

Our mothers had their turn too to share what is most meaningful to them about working at SHE.

Nadine and her daughter Barbara, age 4

Nadine and her daughter Barbara, age 4

"I am inspired to go to work everyday because I am producing something helpful for girls and women."

Marie Louise Umulisa with her children

Marie Louise Umulisa with her children

" I didn’t feel comfortable to talk about menstruation and pads, but now that I produce them I feel comfortable and confident to talk about both menstruation and using pads."

Sandrine and her children

Sandrine and her children

"The most meaningful part of my work is that I proudly use the product that I have produced myself!"

Thanks to our working moms are doing to make a lasting impact for their children and for their communities! Happy Mother’s Day!

We’re Hiring! Join the SHE Team as our Executive Director

in Blog  by Elizabeth Scharpf

About Sustainable Health Enterprises:

Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), an award-winning social venture recognized by Harvard Business School, Bill Clinton, and most recently featured by Pulitzer Prize New York Times writer Nick Kristof in his new book, is looking for an Executive Director. We’ve come a long way in a short time and now we’re at an exciting growth point and looking for a dynamic Executive Director (a newly created position) to help lead the way!

SHE is an innovative social venture that invests in people and ideas that are typically overlooked (and often taboo) as vehicles of socio-economic change. SHE’s first initiative, SHE28, addresses girls’ and women’s lack of access to affordable menstrual pads resulting in significant costs to their reproductive health, educational achievements, work productivity, and dignity.  SHE is stemming these costs by developing a franchise model to manufacture and distribute affordable, eco-friendly menstrual pads for girls and women by sourcing local, inexpensive raw materials (e.g., banana fibers) and leveraging existing networks.  Coupling these new businesses with public health and hygiene education and advocacy will have a significant social and economic impact on these communities.

Job Description: Executive Director

The Executive Director will oversee all aspects of SHE, including:

Strategy

  1. Review existing 5 year scale strategy and alter (if need be based on current milestones and environment);
  2. Determine steps to execute (operational, human resource, financial requirements)
  3. Get Board/team buy in
  4. Execute on 5 year plan with measurable progress against quarterly and annual targets

Capital raising

  1. Determine capital needs based on updated strategy
  2. Ultimately responsible for raising funds by utilizing existing partnerships and developing new ones (individual, institutional, Board)
    • Individual-driven: catalyzing major gifts (50K+ range)
    • Institutional: catalyzing $100K+ large multi-year gifts
    • Board: facilitate significant board involvement in raising capital
    • Request for proposals: oversee grant proposal writing and reporting in the 100K+ range
  3. Oversee all stewardship of all major capital coming in through in-person meetings and/or reports
  4. Ensure SHE Rwanda is meeting sales targets; work with CEO and Board on other diversified earned income streams

Management (Operations, Finance, Organizational Development, Human Resources)

  1. Ensure Rwandan operations are fulfilling investor milestones
  2. Oversee sharing of best practices globally based on 5 year strategy
  3. Work with vendors to follow all financial reporting required by investors as well as US government (including 990 and CHAR filings, audit)
  4. Work with vendors and COO Global and Head of Operations Rwanda to make sure all policies and processes are in place for smooth operations
  5. Make recommendations on hiring decisions in US and confer with Heads of Operations Rwanda on HR decisions in Rwanda

Board Relations

  1. Prepare materials for quarterly Board meetings, updating board on operations, strategy, etc
  2. Work with Board Chair to recruit potential new Board members and/or advisors who would accelerate our progress

Leadership

  1. Lead with integrity, passion, and determination and inspire the staff and international community
  2. Advocate for SHE externally. The Executive Director would represent SHE and/or tap certain staff to represent SHE in national and/or international meetings, communicating our mission to increase our reach and impact.

Qualifications

We are looking for outstanding candidates who fit the following criteria:

  • Track record: At least five years of senior management experience in a growing, global organization preferred
  • Business savvy: Have been responsible for a P&L (preferably $1M+) and built and managed teams that successfully executed on a strategic plan for impact and scale.
  • Must be experienced in building financial models that will drive key parts of the strategy.
  • Capital raising: Proven track record of raising venture philanthropic capital (via individuals, institutions—large foundations, corporations, etc) and/or creative new structures
  • Extensive network, including relationships with potential large funders and/or strategic partners
  • Exceptional communications skills
  • Can-do positive attitude (we did figure out how to make sanitary pads out of banana trees—not easy!) and initiative
  • Bachelor degree required, advanced degree preferred
  • Strong background in international economic development and/or social entrepreneurship preferred, but open to highly-skilled unique leaders
  • Language: English required. French is a plus

Job Location: Preferably NYC with up to 50% travel, nationally and internationally

Duration
 minimum: 2+ years commitment, full-time job.

Preferred Start Date:
 June 2015

Compensation: Competitive with performance-driven bonuses and raises

To Apply:

Please send cover letter and CV to hresources@SHEinnovates.com as late as May 5, 2015 (this is rolling though, so the earlier the better) and let us know why you would be the best person for the job today!

 

Sarah Boeckmann, our M&E consultant (second from left) learns more about the menstrual hygiene management challenges for girls from the headmistress at the GS Giyaka school.

By the Numbers: Our M&E Strategy

in Blog  by connie lewin

Guest post by Sarah Boeckmann, our M&E Consultant

I have been SHE’s Monitoring and Evaluation consultant for about 2 years. That means I have helped the team develop a logical framework for SHE’s education and advocacy work. I also developed tools to help them collect data that, in the long term, will help SHE understand the impact of its work on women and girls in Rwanda. Recently I had the chance to go to Rwanda to work with the team there to test some data collection tools that are being used to collect data from girls in 10 rural, primary schools.

SHE is at a very exciting moment right now because menstrual hygiene management (MHM) clubs are starting this term in 10 schools in Kayonza. The clubs are run by teachers trained by Nadia Hitmana, SHE’s Health and Hygiene Manager, to teach an MHM curriculum to students. Now that these clubs are about to kick off, and pads will be reaching these same schools, it is important for SHE to collect baseline data on the students in these clubs to understand the effect the training has on them.

SHE is interested both in how the training affects their knowledge of menstruation and healthy menstrual hygiene practices, but also if and how the training affects their behavior around menstruation. This includes everything from their use and disposal of pads, to how confident they feel during their period, to how often they are absent from school because of their period.

Data like this is tricky and complex to gather accurately and a good way to try to get the best data possible is to use a combination of quantitative (like surveys) and qualitative (like focus groups) data collection tools. It is hard to get these tools right without testing them in the setting where they are meant to be used.

While I was in Rwanda we spent a day in one of the schools testing the various tools with a classroom of girls who volunteered.  These are the kinds of things that we were looking for:

  • Were their questions that the girls didn’t understand?
  • Were we missing any possible answer choices on multiple choice questions?
  • How long did it take to complete a survey?

We also asked the students what they thought of the tools and how they were administered. Sometimes asking those kinds of open-ended questions point out problems you never would have considered.

Testing the tools in a real life setting always makes glaringly obvious issues you never would have considered. You might find out the tool you thought would take 30 minutes takes 2 hours, or that a question you thought was great makes absolutely no sense.

As for us, we had decided that to test the students’ knowledge of menstruation and MHM we would have them close their eyes and raise their hands yes or no/true or false in respond to a question. We thought this would solve the problem of having students of different ages and literacy levels taking one test. We also wanted to make the data collection process more fun for the students and not start the club off with formal test that might make the club seem boring or scary. What we hadn’t considered was that there would be so many kids in a small classroom that they could barely raise a hand and could definitely feel what the kids on either side of them were doing.

While piloting data collection tools highlight problems, it also makes solutions obvious as well. The teacher who was with us pointed out that afterschool clubs are often held outside and that if the students were outside they could be more spread out, solving the problem. Piloting the tools and seeing what issues arise helped us to make the changes needed to finalize the tools.

Nadia and Flora are collecting lots of great baseline data from more than 200 girls right now before they receive pads or start learning about MHM. Then we will collect data from a similar number of girls after they spend a term learning about MHM from SHE-Trained Teachers and see what changes or doesn’t change and why.

It is especially important for SHE to get this kind of rich, detailed information from the girls in these 10 schools so that the team can learn and make changes based on lessons learned as it scales-up to providing pads and teacher training throughout Rwanda.