Coleman Andrea
Organization: Riders for Health
Year Founded: 1988
Country: United Kingdom
Website: www.riders.org
Geographic Area of Impact: .
Model: Hybrid Non-Profit
Focus: Health.
Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum Video Audio Interview The Innovation It only takes a few hours to reach any capital in the world by plane, but it can take days and many hardships to reach the more rural areas in developing countries. Many development efforts fail because distribution proves to be a key neglected component. Food supplies, new drugs, vaccines and other critical health products including mosquito nets and condoms are useless unless they reach their destination. Riders for Health (Riders) addresses these delivery barriers by managing vehicles to support those organizations whose remit is to reach the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa with health care and vital services. Riders has proven that adequate modern-day technology can perform without breakdowns even across the unforgiving terrain of rural Africa. To achieve this success, Riders had to bring about a change in traditional practices. By working closely with local communities, governments and other agencies they have gotten across the message that, rather than using something until it breaks down, the life and performance of a vehicle or equipment can be extended through preventative maintenance. In addition to cost savings, Riders has a significant impact in the area of primary health care delivery. By using a motorcycle, for example, health and other development workers have increased their number of visits to remote communities by at least 300%. Riders manages more than 1000 vehicles involved in direct health care delivery and a conservative estimate shows that 11 million people are receiving regular, reliable health care thanks to Riders’ programs. These figures were confirmed by an independent report carried out in 2005. In one district in Zimbabwe, death rates from malaria decreased by 20% after health workers were equipped with motorcycles and could cover 96% of the district with preventive services, mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs. Background Currently, 30,000 children under the age of five die each day across the developing world from preventable or treatable diseases including measles, diarrhoea and malaria. Immunization programs still do not reach 30 million children each year and measles and tetanus kill more than one million children under five each year. Birth-related complications contribute to nearly one-third of all newborn deaths. Access to skilled attendants could reduce these deaths, but more than half of women in sub-Saharan Africa give birth alone or with untrained assistance. Often, the one factor preventing the delivery of health care is the lack of managed transportation. Most of Africa, as well as rural areas in other parts of the world, have no infrastructure for motor vehicle maintenance that would ensure lasting and cost-efficient transportation and facilitate a lifeline for needed goods and supplies. Strategy Riders for Health has developed a focused expertise in planned preventive maintenance and fleet management. Their innovative transport systems incorporate training in driving skills, daily maintenance procedures, fuelling supply-chain logistics for replacement parts and interval preventative maintenance. Riders places great emphasis on building local capacity to manage and maintain its vehicles. As a result, Riders is able to operate fleets of vehicles in the harshest conditions with a zero breakdown rate for five years or longer. Riders has demonstrated that a properly managed vehicle under its system will save more than 50% of costs over a six-year period, compared to an unmanaged vehicle. Riders has a solid base of experience, expertise and specialist knowledge built over nearly 20 years of operating in sub-Saharan Africa. They currently operate on a national scale in Zimbabwe and the Gambia in full contractual partnership with Ministries of Health (MoHs) and work on a sub-national scale with partner agencies (either MoHs, NGOs, UN agencies or community-based organizations – CBOs) in Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. In 2002, Riders set up the International Academy of Vehicle Management in Harare, where it has trained more than 1400 men and women in safe riding and driving, vehicle maintenance and fleet management. The values held by Riders are fundamental to the design of the system and to how it is run on a day-to-day basis. They are essential for appropriate sustainable development, systematic behaviours and predictability. Riders’ operational values are to maintain focus and keep standards high in core competence, create and establish appropriate and replicable models, build competence and a replicable skills base, encourage and respect public/private/business partnerships, produce costings for budgeting, transparency and accountability and maximise available resources, employ only nationals of the countries concerned to run the programmes. During the last three years, Riders generated over 70% of its revenues from its own social enterprises (running events, for example) and from contract partners. In addition, Riders receives donations from motorcyclists and other supporters around the world. The Entrepreneur Andrea and Barry Coleman met through a common interest, motorcycle racing. The movement that would become Riders for Health started in the motorcycle community when a group of people working in the grand prix paddock began general fundraising for children in difficulties in developing countries. During several trips to Africa in the late 1980s to see the fruits of this fundraising, Barry and Andrea Coleman and American racer Randy Mamola noticed that vehicles intended for use in the delivery of health care were not being used because they had broken down. The Colemans realized that progress in the vital area of disease prevention and eradication in Africa was being hampered by the lack of reliable mobility, particularly for local health professionals. They became engaged in active fundraising for a programme of vehicle management initiated by Save the Children and acted as consultants in the setting up of management programmes in Lesotho, Ghana and Zimbabwe. In 1996, so that funding raised in the motorcycle community could go more directly to vehicle management programmes, Riders was set up as an independent NGO. Andrea Coleman is chief executive officer and has guided the financial/funding and advocacy development of Riders, including establishing the entrepreneurial income streams and innovative fundraising initiatives that have enabled organisational growth. Barry Coleman, executive director, is designer of the groundbreaking Transport Resource Management and Transport Asset Management systems and the Riders cost-per-kilometre calculator.
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