Living Goods, a social enterprise founded in Uganda and focused on improving health and incomes of the poor, has won the 2016 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
The organization together with its Founder, Chuck Slaughter, were recognized for creating a community of health workers that deliver products for improving health and incomes of underprivileged communities. Living Goods will receive $1.25 million (shs4.25 billion) from the Skoll Foundation to scale their work and increase impact.
The Skoll Awards, according to the foundation, distinguish transformative leaders whose organizations are disrupting the status quo, driving large-scale equilibrium change, and are poised to create even greater impact on the world.
Speaking at the 2016 Awards, which took place in Oxford, England, Jeff Skoll, Founder and Chairman of the Skoll Foundation, said, “The social entrepreneur is driven to challenge injustice.”
“Empowering those who have the greatest stake in building a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities, social entrepreneurs instigate change where it is desperately needed. They give voice and agency to the voiceless and marginalized, and give us good reason to believe in a radically better future.”
Living Goods’ Community Health Promoters (CHPs) go door-to-door teaching families how to improve their health, and diagnosing and treating patients. They also sell health products such as bed nets, de-worming pills, anti-malaria and diarrhea treatments, fortified foods, and water filters.
“The credit for these results, and the honor of the Skoll award goes foremost to our nearly 4,000 committed Community Health Promoters who travel tirelessly door-to-door every day, bringing better health to their villages, one mother and child at a time,” said Slaughter.
Alfred Wise, Country Director, Living Goods Uganda, said: “Our success is largely due to the guidance and support we’ve received from our partners at the Ministry of Health, especially the Minister, Dr. Elioda, Tumwesigye, and the Director General, Dr. Aceng. This award will help us to scale our work and reach more communities in need of our services. The award money will be used to expand to more Districts, and to recruit more CHPs to enable us fulfill our goal of reducing child mortality and supporting children and women”.
Living Goods Uganda supports over 1,000 Community Health Promoters, directly serving more than 800,000 people in Kampala, Wakiso, Masaka, Jinja, Mukono, Mpigi, Iganga, Mityana, Mbale and Lira.
Last year, GSK, a global healthcare company, and Save the Children awarded Living Goods US$120,000 (Shs343 million), to support the expansion of its innovative approach to tackling child deaths in remote areas by bringing life-saving health services directly to people’s doorsteps. Living Goods Uganda was one of four African initiatives that won a share of the $1 million GSK and Save the Children Healthcare Innovation Award.