Barev Balik: How a child and maternal healthcare app brings business closer to the public sector
By Ruzanna Baldryan, Communications Lead, SDG Innovation Lab
Not long ago, the private companies spoke a language different from the main players in the development sector: social initiatives used to be side projects rather than the core of the operations of the businesses. Likewise, for decades, the social initiative gap was closed mainly by development organizations sometimes with little focus on the long-term financial sustainability of their initiatives. It all changed when the SDGs, picking up on the lessons learned from MDGs, brought about a brand-new culture of collaboration among different players of the ecosystem, including the government, development organizations, and the private sector.
Fast forward to 2020, there is still buzz around the shortfall of about annually $ 2,5 trillion — which is a bit less than the GDP of the sixth-largest economy of the world, France ($ 2,7 trillion) — to achieve the SDGs. This issue was exacerbated further in the light of the Covid-19 crisis which hit development gains across the world and jeopardized the implementation of Agenda 2030 by overwhelming economies and global health.
Attempts to develop models for multi-stakeholder collaboration have also been made in Armenia long before the crisis. UNDP has been transforming the way that the private sector contributes to the public good for several years already — from holding accelerators and innovation challenges to building funding models that welcome the businesses. One such attempt to disrupt the business-as-usual and bring the business world closer to the development sector was the Impact Investment for Development Summit in 2017. On the lookout for a new sustainable mechanism to matchmake public policymakers, investors, and enterprises and the development ecosystem, our Lab was founded. Ever since its inception, Armenia SDG Innovation Lab has been reinventing development sector practices by acting as a catalyst for brewing evidence-based policy solutions via cross-sectoral collaboration.
Prior to the COVID19 crisis, the SDG Lab was working on new collaboration models that would galvanize all our stakeholders, including business leaders, around a common shared outcome. COVID-19 served as an accelerator to rethink and redesign how we do public policy innovation and come up with new sustainable models for the private sector to contribute to sustainable development.
The new scheme
Covid19 pandemic once again reminded us of how intertwined the world has become and that isolated band-aid solutions should be things of the past. To balance economic, social, and environmental progress and address alarming setbacks caused by the pandemic, all the ecosystem players were challenged to review their priorities and kick off a new cross-sectoral dialogue for integrated growth.
Building on this experience and recognizing businesses as a driving force for economic recovery — that inclusively eradicates poverty and leaves no one behind — and force for good, the Armenia SDG Innovation Lab came up with a new scheme that raises private-sector funds as seed capital for public policy innovation and public service reform programs. Through this mechanism, businesses — which are challenged to shift their attention from mere financial gains to sustainability practices and long-term values in light of Covid19 — can grow from a traditional financial partner to a more active one by engaging with governments and other stakeholders in generating fundamental solutions instead of one-off CSR initiatives.
This innovative approach was successfully tested with one of the biggest telecommunication companies in Armenia — Vivacell MTS Armenia.
Barev Balik
Maternal and child healthcare has always constituted an important part of Armenia’s healthcare strategies. Despite the impressive gains accrued in recent years for important indicators such as the declining maternal and under-five child mortality ratios, we were slightly off track of improving maternal and child health even before the crisis. Now, this progress is threatened by Covid19.
Taking this into account and acknowledging the importance of engaging all players in approaching a complex developmental issue, such as improving the maternal and child healthcare system in Armenia, the Lab brought the Government and Vivacell MTS Armenia — which acknowledges health as one of its social investment policy priority — to the table and created legitimacy and a mechanism for innovative ways of working. The Government of Armenia and VivaCell-MTS signed an MoU this June to modernize and improve the maternal healthcare system in Armenia through the development of maternal mobile health (mHealth) app and web portal. The project dubbed Barev Balik (Hello, kiddo) will be implemented by our Lab in cooperation with Vivacell MTS and the Government of Armenia.
The project will bring together healthcare experts, ehealth data, and the mobile ID technology of Vivacell MTS to develop a database, understand user interaction, and monitor and evaluate the progress of the project. Additionally, findings from the project will turn into policy recommendations.
BarevBalik is a practical example of how joint efforts from two “different camps” can bring diverse institutions closer to create more sustainable mechanisms of cooperation and social goods. This is the first time that a private sector representative and Government share a similar vision and bring a new culture of public policy innovation.
Barev Balik is a two-year project currently in the making. Follow us as we embark on this unique journey and test things and learn along the way. More updates are coming soon.
Get in touch.
● Nayiri Shorjian, Service Design and Research Lead
● Ruzanna Baldryan SDG Lab Communications Lead
