The Patchwork Collective, ICONIQ Impact (ICONIQ Capital’s platform for collaborative philanthropy) and Lever for Change announced five finalists for the $10 million Maternal & Infant Health Award. The grant competition will support innovative, community-led projects that focus on saving mothers and newborns from complications in childbirth.
Every year 4.5 million pregnant women and newborn children die. That’s one death every seven seconds, according to the World Health Organization. The majority of these deaths stem from complications that are not only detectable but also preventable with proper attention and medical care.
The Maternal & Infant Health Award was created to help community leaders –particularly those in low- resource communities — provide women with access to safe, equitable, and quality maternal healthcare.
“Mothers are caregivers and nurturers,” said Marie Dageville, co-founder of The Patchwork Collective. “They are breadwinners and providers. They are a source of love, knowledge, and social cohesion. … The Patchwork Collective launched this award to help fund programs and projects that are treating this issue with the attention and urgency it demands and saving the lives of the world’s most at-risk mothers and children.”
There were 220 applications from 49 countries, with each entry subject to peer-to-peer reviews and multiple rigorous evaluations by experts from multiple disciplines across the world. The finalists were selected based on four key criteria: whether they were community-led, impactful, feasible, and durable in their proposed approaches.
Each of the five finalist teams will receive a one-time $200,000 planning grant, which includes nine months of capacity-building support to further develop their project and strengthen their application. In late 2023, one finalist will then be awarded the remaining $9 million.
The five finalists’ projects are listed in alphabetical order:
Delivering Safer Births: Connecting Indigenous Mothers, Midwives, Navigators, and Hospitals in Guatemala:
Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq will adapt and scale their program to cover 10,000 births annually in five Guatemalan Provinces and five Mayan languages. Equipping midwives with an illustrated, checklist-based smartphone application will help detect high-risk complications and provide culturally and linguistically appropriate care for indigenous mothers requiring hospital services, ultimately reducing maternal mortality by 80%.
Elevating Mothers’ Voices to Improve Pregnancy Outcomes in Kenya:
Jacaranda Health partners with governments to deploy affordable and scalable solutions through government hospitals, where the majority of underserved mothers and babies receive care. Jacaranda’s low- cost, evidence-based approach combines: 1) a digital health platform, 2) a nurse mentorship program, and 3) a data infrastructure system that connects mothers, communities, and government partners. In the context of the Maternal & Infant Health Award, Jacaranda would scale its programs nationally in Kenya, impacting 60% of pregnancies there.
Intercultural Healthcare for Mothers and Infants in Rural Colombia:
SinergiasONG will work with local health institutions to improve maternal and child health services and their quality of life. Through a powerful alliance of health professionals, educators, community leaders, and social sciences professionals, SinergiasONG will strengthen intercultural health models that incorporate community and ancestral health practices of ethnic and rural populations.
Scaling Community-led Health, Improving Maternal and Infant Outcomes in Kenya:
Lwala Community Alliance, Dandelion Africa, and Village HopeCore International—all Kenyan-founded organizations—will scale their community-led health model in three rural Kenyan counties. Their work will unlock community leadership, professionalize community health workers, and strengthen health facilities, ultimately reducing maternal and infant mortality.
Sustainably Improving Maternal and Newborn Health in Uganda:
The Babies and Mothers Alive Foundation (BAMA) will scale its innovative NGO-Government partnership model to five districts serving a population of 1,115,540. BAMA will train 30 government-employed Mentor Midwives and 150 community health workers, and other reproductive and child health stakeholders to deliver quality care, advocate for improved government health services, and strengthen district health management through improved quality data collection and reporting in five districts in Uganda.
The Maternal & Infant Health Award is the third in a series of grant competitions managed by Lever for Change in collaboration with ICONIQ Impact. The award follows the Larsen Lam ICONIQ Impact Award, a grant competition launched in 2020 to help secure a brighter, more durable future for refugees worldwide; and the Stronger Democracy Award, a grant competition launched in 2021 to help.
The Maternal & Infant Health Award is being managed by Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that connects donors with bold solutions to the world’s biggest problems, including issues like racial inequity, gender inequality, lack of access to economic opportunity, and climate change.
More information about the Maternal and Infant Health Award and the finalists can be found at https://www.maternalandinfanthealthaward.org.
