Damu-Sasa | Blood Now

Aaron Ochieng Ogunde Co-founded Damu-Sasa. Aaron holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Information Technology from Africa Nazarene University in Kenya. Aaron is extremely passionate about youth entrepreneurship and their involvement in solving perennial challenges, especially through the use of ICT.

With over five years’ professional experience in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Aaron plays pivotal roles in both software design and business development, having been instrumental in the negotiation and execution of the successful Damu-Sasa pilot in Kenya’s Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). 

Blood is key to quality healthcare delivery due to its central role in saving lives. Effective acquisition, management and use of blood and blood services is essential, but blood services management is a complex maze. Simple errors in mishandling or lack of organization can result in adverse patients effects, death, and blood spoiling via expiry or cold chain violations. 

Damu-Sasa offers a unique solution to this challenge. The platform supports safety, timeliness, efficiency, effectiveness and a patient-centered approach in blood services dispensation. Our comprehensive platform covers all aspects of the blood services value-chain, including donor recruitment and recall; unit and product tracking; blood inventory management; and ecosystem scans for blood availability and sharing.

Our platform is a tried and tested solution that is currently running at multiple Kenyan hospitals. Since its pilot phase, the technology has provided notable improvements in hospitals’ management of blood and, consequently, patient health outcomes.

According to a 2016 report from the World Health Organization (WHO), there is a rising demand for donated blood and blood services in African countries, attributable to an increasing burden of bloodborne illnesses and vehicular trauma. Similarly, The Kenya National Blood Transfusion Service (KNBTS) published a 2016 report outlining a demand for 450,000 blood units/year. However, only 33% of this need is currently met. Furthermore, the WHO also reported poor quality management practices throughout the blood services value-chain in Kenya and other African countries, also contributing to the blood shortage. The Centre for Diseases Control (CDC) also reported that Kenya loses up to 1,000 usable units of blood/quarter due to poor handling, inaccurate tracking and expiry. This translates to USD 100,000 lost every quarter. Recently, underperformance of the blood donation system in Kenya has been greatly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and sudden sweeping budget cuts in foreign aid. As such, the need for rigorous cost-efficiency, resourcefulness and smart decision-making in the blood donation space has never been greater. Damu-Sasa is responding to this need by supporting stakeholders at every node in the blood services value-chain through our varied modules.

Damu-Sasa technology is a cloud-based end-to-end blood services information management system. The technology is comprised of six core modules: Donor-Relationship Management; Referral Management; Inter-hospital Collaboration; E-Learning; Internal Management; and Haemovigilance and Reporting. Through these modules, we are able to digitally support blood sourcing, blood donor and donation management, blood screening, inventory management, transfusion management and haemovigilance. The Donor Relationship Management Module provides a direct line of communication between the health provider and the donor to facilitate effective blood appeals. This user-friendly interface contains an appointment scheduling tool with an ability to book donations in accordance with physical distancing precautions. The Referral Management and Inter-hospital Collaboration modules increase connectivity in the blood services value-chain by relaying crucial data between transfusion centres. This minimizes blood waste through real-time supply and demand monitoring and redistribution, as required. The E-Learning module disseminates evidence-based and physician-written health information to users, ensuring appropriate knowledge exchange. The Internal Management Module catalogs, tracks and manages inventory in real-time,  following blood through the supply chain - from blood appeal and collection, to successful transfusion. Finally, the sixth module, Haemovigilance Reporting coordinates with all end-users in the blood services value-chain for real-time monitoring and evaluation.

Transfusing facilities are focal points of the blood services ecosystem in Kenya. Thus, they are our main target client. Overcoming challenges in blood collection and management faced by transfusing facilities is key to rectifying the 60% blood collection shortfall in Kenya.

According to the Kenya National Blood Transfusion Services (KNBTS), there are 470 transfusing facilities across the 47 counties in Kenya. We estimate the total addressable market (comrpised of both public and private facilities) in Kenya to be in excess of $2,000,000 (USD) a year.

This estimate is based on the potential number of sales to be made with transfusing facilities. These will be contracts with county governments, national referral hospitals (KNH, MTRH and OTRH), health facilities in the private sector, and the Ministry of Health (MoH) through the KNBTS. It is expected that facilities would acquire the entire range of Damu-Sasa’s functionalities to address their challenges. Other potential clients include over 57 humanitarian and emergency services providers, dozens of haemovigilance partners, health planning professionals, and health promotion agencies. 

Damu-Sasa also has plans to expand internationally in the future; both to countries within Africa and beyond.

Damu-Sasa emerged in response to a continuing national blood shortage in Kenya. However, this crisis has worsened significantly during the pandemic and the surfacing of COVID-19 has weakened healthcare supply chains globally. Critical blood shortages are now emerging in developed and developing countries alike. Currently, there is a lack of awareness and problem-solving momentum directed towards vigorously combating this crisis, a challenging yet mitigatable problem of our time. The Elevate prize will greatly aid us in scaling up our operations to provide universal and accessible blood services in Kenya and other vulnerable global healthcare systems with similar needs.

Aaron Ogunde and Francis Kilemi were attending their Data Analytics class when they saw a long, winding line in front of their university. People were in a frantic rush to donate blood to over 200 victims of the 2013 Westgate Shopping Mall Attack. Seeing the unstructured appeals for blood and a slow response due to the lack of real-time data on blood levels, the classmates wondered what they could do to help. There had to be a better way. 

Together, the duo created Damu-Sasa, an innovative end-to-end blood services information management system. The platform monitors blood donor relationship management, blood requisition and inventory and utilization management, blood unit tracking, emergency control and reporting, including haemovigilance and stakeholder collaboration. By using the platform, hospitals can communicate with one another and find available blood if needed from neighboring hospitals. The data it provides enhances decision-making, thereby resulting in the effective management of blood services. This leads to reduced costs in the provision of healthcare. The company also aims to address the cultural stigma against blood donation by offering free learning modules to educate the general public.

Coming from Meru county in Kenya, the co-founders of Damu-Sasa have grown up in the exact communities that they are now serving. In fact, a deal was recently finalized with Meru County, confirming the implementation of the Damu-Sasa platform into all five of its public hospitals. Company-wide satisfaction is fueled vigorously by the knowledge that every subsequent donor and hospital registered in their system has the potential to multiply their impact exponentially. The team continues to appreciate the gravity of the issue that they are tackling, as they consistently receive thank you cards from the families of transfusion recipients, expressing their thanks at us having contributed to saving the lives of their loved ones. The long-term motivation of Damu-Sasa is sustained by the exciting opportunity to create system-level change in Kenya by shifting popular culture, reducing dependency on foreign powers, and by protecting the vulnerable populations most acutely affected by the blood shortage. In keeping with a Swahili proverb, “Kikuu hukua kwao” (greatness grows at home), the Damu-Sasa team is honoured to support their neighbours, friends, and fellow Kenyans in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic and in creating long-term sustainability and self-sufficiency in the country’s healthcare system. 

As recognized graduates of the Presidential Digital Talent Program, co-founders Aaron Ogunde and Francis Kilemi built Damu-Sasa’s software from the ground up in its entirety, unburdened by any sub-contracting. Moreover, the two co-founders and another core member together leverage 35 years of experience in the ICT industry, both locally and abroad. In-house technical expertise on the platform's capabilities and underlying code are supported by a personal connection to the local culture and market. These assets work in synergy to position Damu-Sasa as an agile, fast-acting organization that responds rapidly to customer needs and user feedback. Conversely, longitudinal strategic decisions made by the Damu-Sasa co-founders are informed by counsel from a diverse body of trusted advisors. Specifically, Damu-Sasa benefits from the advice of organizations such as Innovative Canadians for Change, AMREF Health Africa, and Titans D’Afrique. This network of strategic partners grants the company access to expertise from humanitarians, clinicians, and business developers from across Africa and North America.

 In summary, Damu-Sasa is a resourceful and agile organization led by ambitious young Kenyans with the hustle and drive required to move quickly, but also with the wisdom to know when to defer to experience and mentorship. These skills, backgrounds, and experiences are enabling Damu-Sasa’s ongoing expansion to capture a total addressable market of transfusion facilities with an unchallenged first-mover advantage, as no product with a similar range of functionalities exists currently in Kenya.

When the COVID-19 pandemic brought economic turmoil to East Africa, promising discussions with potential donors expired as both local and foreign investment in Kenya’s developing economy came to a standstill. Like many others, capacity for technology development and sales was greatly reduced under burdens of limited funding and country-wide lockdown protocol. Occurring just as the software was gaining traction through word-of-mouth referrals, these obstacles were a crippling blow to plans for scaling - a chilling realization in a time of widespread bankruptcy and liquidation among the global startup ecosystem.

Instead of giving up and accepting defeat at the hands of a worldwide pandemic, the Damu-Sasa team chose instead to find opportunities in misfortune. Damu-Sasa was built on the altruistic desire to save lives during one disaster, and it was to persevere, learn, and adapt during this new one.

Seeing healthcare facilities in dire straits, it was clear that a standard sales strategy would not suffice. As such, Damu-Sasa has been offering two of it’s modules free-of-cost to transfusions facilities as a trial prior to future purchases. As such, we are supporting front line healthcare, creating a sales pipeline, and benefiting our community all while during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Central to Damu-Sasa’s mission is the promotion and improvement of accessible and quality healthcare for all Kenyans. As leaders in our community, we strive to be advocates in healthcare promotion and education in our business and personal lives. We realized rampant misinformation as one of the issues polluting the public opinion around blood donation in Kenya. In responding to the situation, we provide a free E-learning module to all of our registered donors and consumers. Displaying a series of clinician-written health articles custom-written for our platform, this module helps to combat superstition that creates hesitation to donate. Damu-Sasa is the only known private sector entity working to change the unproductive public opinion of blood donation, which is a contributing factor in the blood shortage crisis in Kenya. Popular pseudoscience-based myths have been compounded with the erroneous belief that donating blood will expose oneself to the coronavirus, thereby substantially worsening the blood shortage since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, we have supplemented the  blood donation-related content in our E-Learning module with guidelines on COVID-19 safety, self-care tips for social isolation, and reassurement in the safety of blood donation facilities.

Damu-Sasa is a first-in-class digital blood services management system that has the ability to radicalize the way in which blood donations and transfusions are performed in Kenya and East Africa. Currently, blood donor registration and blood transfusion management is performed manually and is restricted to major transfusing facilities in Nairobi. This means that there is poor donor retention and recruitment, especially in times of crisis. As well, there is a large wasting of blood and blood products, due to an inability to identify amounts of available units, types of units needed compared to those about to expire relative to the requirements of neighbouring hospitals and health centres. Damu-Sasa is the solution to this ineffective management of blood services, and one that promotes quality and cost-effectiveness. Instead of tracking all donors, blood units and haemovigilance reports manually and managing them separately by each hospital, Damu-Sasa’s technology allows for inter-hospital connectivity by digitizing this crucial data and allowing facilities to collectively monitor stocks of blood and blood products in real time. As such, Damu-Sasa-enabled facilities are able to put out calls for cross-matched blood when incurring shortages, and able to redistribute their own supply to other facilities in times of surplus. As such, Damu-Sasa dramatically reduces the amount of time required to identify and respond to supply insufficiencies while greatly minimizing blood wastage. This is a disruptive change to the current blood donation value chain, which suffers greatly from limited connectivity, bureaucratic delays, and resource wastage.

The Damu-Sasa theory of change consists of three main impact chains: 

First, Damu-Sasa software inputs increased blood donor recruitment, mobilization, recall, and a wide variety of performance and efficiency improvements into various nodes in the blood services value chain. This outputs the timely transfusion of correctly cross-matched blood into patients incurring health conditions that require immediate transfusion of whole blood or blood products. Transfusion-requiring health concerns notably include postpartum hemorrhage, vehicular trauma, and infant jaundice  - all of which continue to occur during COVID-19 lockdown measures. The short term impact of transfusions mediated by Damu-Sasa is less early death in acute cases, and improved quality of life in subacute cases. The long term impact of reduced loss-of-life can manifest in many ways, but poignantly as increased economic productivity from people who live longer, and thus contribute to the Kenyan economy longer and more substantially.

Second, the Damu-Sasa platform reduces blood wastage through supply and demand monitoring and timely redistribution. As such, less blood goes to waste through expiry and cold chain violation. Less blood lost to wastage increases the total availability of blood, which translates into more transfusions that can be executed successfully. Thus, minimizing blood wastage feeds into the short term and long term effects of impact chain number one. Furthermore, less blood wasted will result in less money wasted. Better cost-efficiency in the blood services value chain will mean that stakeholders require less funding and are thus able to operate more efficiently and independently. Increased cost-efficiency here will generate system-level effects by making Kenyan blood services less dependent on inconsistent streams of foreign aid, and less vulnerable during strains such as future pandemics.

Third, our e-learning module and community advocacy work provides Kenyans with evidence-based, clinician-supported health information. With access to this information, our users should be able to make informed decisions when critically evaluating pseudoscience, misinformation, and urban myths relating to blood donation and transfusion. As such, we would hope that they see the value in donating blood, which should eventually increase blood donation rates, feeding into impact chain number one.

To date, the Damu-Sasa software platform has been successfully implemented into 13 hospitals across 8 of the 47 counties in Kenya. To complement our expansion, build societal goodwill, and promote social good, Damu-Sasa has carried out several pro-bono blood drives and spearheaded advocacy programs promoting the national blood shortage crisis. As a result, Damu-Sasa has now reached 71,000 individual donor registrations. In turn, these donors have contributed to 9087 successful blood transfusions digitally managed front-to-back by Damu-Sasa software. 

We intend to translate our current momentum into exponential growth by consolidating our share of the Kenyan market and seeking new markets in other African countries facing similar systemic issues in their blood services value-chains. Our goal in the next 12 months is to reach one million individual donors registered with Damu-Sasa, coupled with the completion of at least another 9000 successful transfusions facilitated by our platform. Five years from now, we aim to have expanded coverage across all 47 counties of Kenya and to be starting entry into the international market. Most immediately, we aim to serve the greater East African region where our neighboring countries - Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Tanzania – are also facing health crises strikingly similar to our own. With the support of our international partners, Innovative Canadians for Change, we are currently exploring opportunities in Asia and North America, markets where we hope to enter in the next five years.

The Damu-Sasa team aims to maximize blood donor registration numbers and gainfully support subsequent transfusions of whole blood and fractionated blood products. As such, we will create a resilience to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic while building long-term sustainability and self-sufficiency in the blood donation space. We aim to showcase how a grassroots social enterprise can respond to complex humanitarian issues with a systems-level solution. To achieve our desired impact, we are pursuing both short- and long-term goals. Within a year, we intend to implement Damu-Sasa into several key, high-volume Kenyan hospitals including Nairobi Hospital, Mater Misericordiae Hospital and the Aga Khan Hospital. In support of these rollouts, we are also on the cusp of launching an Android application to simplify donation appointment scheduling and facilitate donor mobilization and e-learning. Currently, Damu-Sasa software interfaces with registered donors via email and/or SMS, and we believe a comprehensive application would improve user experience while enabling us to expand quicker. Moreover, we are formalizing two additional partnerships in the next year: A partnership with the media outlet Standard Group, to assist in raising awareness and traffic towards our application upon its launch; and operationalization of our relationship with the Kenya Red Cross. In the longer term, we aim to accelerate rollouts in counties beyond the Greater Nairobi Metropolitan Area, including  Kiambu, Muranga, Machakos, Nyeri, Kisumu, and Mombasa counties. Within the next five years, we are seeking to expand to at least three other East African countries.

The greatest barrier facing Damu-Sasa in the next year is financial limitations due to a lack of access to capital. Access to capital is already limited in an emerging economy such as Kenya, but given the current global economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we anticipate further difficulties in financing the company. This capital is needed to advance the development of Damu-Sasa’s Android application which will play a key role in improving the company’s ability to engage current and potential blood donors. Secondly, Damu-Sasa has to address technological and bureaucratic infrastructure limitations in the country. To provide comprehensive, quality care to all Kenyans, Damu-Sasa is targeting implementation into district and sub-district hospitals and health centres in all of Kenya’s counties. However, this expansion will be limited by the technological and medical infrastructure of these smaller facilities to accommodate blood donors, transfusions and Damu-Sasa’s digital platform. This is coupled with a lack of intellectual property protection and a bureaucratic system resistant to change, thus impeding the company from effectively scaling its offering. Lastly, the culture of blood donation in Kenya is one of ambivalence and distrust. Superstitions and religious beliefs impede many Kenyans from donating blood and receiving blood transfusions. Additionally, fear of incidental discovery of blood-borne disease, such as HIV and malaria also contribute to blood donation reluctance.

By forming cross-sector partnerships and strengthening Damu-Sasa’s network, the company can address the key barriers that are currently complicating scaling. First, accessing capital is one of Damu-Sasa’s most urgent priorities. To help secure funding, the company has hired the non-profit Innovative Canadians for Change consulting services. This partnership is leveraging connections and human resources to find opportunities for grants and investment while strengthening business development assets. To address the infrastructure barriers the company anticipates USSD mobile expansion to more rural and remote communities, Damu-Sasa has begun engaging with the Rural Private Hospital Association (RUPHA). RUPAH is working with Damu-Sasa to ensure that the technology can be implemented in their hospitals and allow for access to blood transfusion services in remote regions of Kenya. Finally, an ongoing barrier to blood services in Kenya is the blood donation culture steeped in pseudoscience and superstition. 

In collaboration with the government, we are committed to investing in health education and promotion with other entities for mutual benefits working towards radically reversing this negative culture. Through community blood drives, free E-learning modules and advertising partnerships with local radio and transportation companies we are educating the public on the necessity of blood services and the safety of the donation process. In summary, Damu-Sasa is cognizant of threats to scaling and implementation, but we are actively combating these barriers and mitigating these risks, either by innovating ourselves or seeking expertise from others.

Since inception in the Presidential Digital Talent Program curated by the Kenyan ICT Authority (ICTA) and the Kenyan Ministry of ICT (MoICT), Damu-Sasa has been supported by these public institutions. Thus, the company has long understood the utility of securing strategic partners and has grown its collaborative network accordingly. Since 2018, we have had a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Amref Health Africa – one of the largest and longest-standing NGOs operating in Africa with over 50 years of experience working in support of healthcare provision. Amref has promoted Damu-Sasa since its launch, viewing Damu-Sasa as a critical component to supporting the desired implementation of Universal Health Coverage in Kenya. Furthermore, Damu-Sasa is also supported by two consulting organizations: a local entity, Titans D’Afrique, and an international non-profit, Innovative Canadians for Change (ICChange). As growth of the company has accelerated, Damu-Sasa has been leveraging ICChange’s international network and human capital to explore funding opportunities and markets for future expansion while refining business development assets. 

Lastly, Damu-Sasa has also directly integrated partnerships as nodes in its business model. The Postal Corporation of Kenya has agreed to leverage their delivery services as a way to rapidly transport blood between transfusion facilities via Damu-Sasa’s inter-hospital collaborations module. Driver education and training is currently underway. We have also partnered with Little Cab, a ride-hailing service with more than a million users. This partnership allows us to transmit blood appeals to their entire user base, thereby magnifying our blood donor engagement capacity more than tenfold.

The main goal and driver of Damu-Sasa’s work is to save lives, reduce healthcare provider stress and increase health provision efficiency through improved blood services management. The product has proven to be of value to transfusing facilities, haemovigilance partners, emergency services providers, health planning officials, and most importantly, patients and their families. Thus, there are many stakeholders in the blood services management ecosystem that stand to benefit from the unique value provided by the Damu-Sasa software. To address all stakeholders, Damu-Sasa offers premium packages suitable for each of these players, dependent on their area of participation in the blood services value-chain. That is, different stakeholders may have interest in one, several or all of the available modules, and can opt-in for what they need most in their position. In all cases, Damu-Sasa will be distributed via a Software as a Service (SaaS) annual subscription model. The service will be offered to all of the 470 transfusing facilities across all 47 counties in Kenya, in addition to 57 humanitarian and emergency services providers, dozens of haemovigilance partners, health planning professionals and health promotion agencies. These market projections were reliably calculated based upon a completed, comprehensive market analysis.

Currently, Damu-Sasa is bootstrapping by using existing personal resources for operational expenses while devoting its efforts on establishing its brand and service offering. During the next phase of development, Damu-Sasa aims to sustain operations through applying for grants and seeking short-term bridge loans to reach the next stages of scaling its business. Currently, the company is exploring possible grants that fit within the company’s scope and mission. In the coming stages, Damu-Sasa aims to raise investment capital with both debt and equity partners. These avenues will open a greater source of capital and allow for expansion, development and scaling of the company.

As the company grows and expands, it will employ an entrepreneur support business model and a flat rate pricing/subscription pricing strategy. As updates and new iterations of the platform become available, there will be an additional charge for installing and training for the updated system and a tiered pricing strategy can be introduced to the customers. As secondary revenue streams, the company will provide learning modules and IT services to the customers. Learning modules will be available to consumers for an annual or monthly subscription with an option to customize the number and type of modules for different pricing schemes. IT technical support will be provided to consumers as a premium service. This service will encompass all support for training staff on platform use, fixing issues that arise with the system and assisting with any other questions or required support.

Although the company is fully bootstrapped to date, it has received non-monetary services from partner organizations that have been received as an investment of time and expertise. One such service has been the support received from the ICT Authority (ICTA) - a state corporation responsible for managing the government’s ICT functions. ICTA registered Damu-Sasa within its “Presidential Digital Talent Programme” (PDTP), a Kenyan-based internship program that focuses on developing professionals in the ICT space through public and private sector collaboration. Through this program, Damu-Sasa was able to secure its first 9-month pilot project at the Kenyatta National Hospital where it is still running after a successful trial. The pilot-project allowed the company to evaluate the feasibility and viability of its IT platform before a full-scale implementation across other hospitals across Kenya. As an alumnus of the PDTP, Damu-Sasa can utilize the program’s network as a great source of support. With technology giants like Google, Microsoft, and Oracle being partners of the PDTP, Damu-Sasa should explore opportunities for mentorship from professionals in these organizations. Furthermore, with the backing of government organisations like the ICTA, Damu-Sasa has been established as a reputable IT platform and thus is more likely to receive approval for implementation into new facilities in Kenya. These connections also allow it to seek consultation on how to ensure state ICT regulations are being abided by at all times. In addition, Damu-Sasa has received significant media exposure which is anticipated to offset marketing and brand identity development costs.

We are seeking to raise between $100,000 and 150,000 USD by the end of 2020 to support costs largely relating to hiring, Android app development, and operations. We aim to cover the budget shortfall through revenue from sales. We are still a relatively young company, and are thus firstly aiming to capitalize the amount of revenue available to use in grants prior to seeking debt financing. Since our business model and success so far have been largely a result of gainful relationship building, we would consider equity offers from investors interested in being strategic partners and supporting our vision of scaling and expansion. However, as Damu-Sasa seeks to continue expanding, annual expenses will also increase to support growing operations. Thus, a grant such as MIT Solve’s Elevate Prize would fuel the growth of Damu-Sasa - without the organization having to give up equity for an investment, or relying solely on revenue generated to compensate for costs.

Damu-Sasa’s projected expenses for 2020 total to approximately $495,000 U.S. Dollars (USD). All currency is denominated from Kenyan Shilling (Ksh) to USD using the foreign exchange rate of 0.0093 (USD) to 1 (Ksh) as of July 12, 2020. The breakdown of the estimated budget is as follows:

1. Staff Salaries: $127,713 (USD)

   1. Salaried staff is comprised of 23 employees

   2. Sales Representatives and ICT Officers are growing departments that are essential for Damu-Sasa’s growth. Thus, these two departments consist of the largest salary expenses this year.

2. Board Committee Allowances: $17,365 (USD)

   1. Board chairman compensation

   2. Board members compensation

   3. Meals

3. Product Marketing: $112,589 (USD)

   1. Digital marketing

   2. Merchandise distribution

   3. Event hosting

   4. Advertising and surveys

   5. Participation in conferences  

4. Software Operating Expenses: $4,986 (USD)

   1. Microsoft Azure platform hosting

   2. SMS and email service fees

   3. Firebase cloud messaging software subscription

   4. Google Maps subscription

   5. Zoom teleconferencing and webinar software subscription

5. Business Travel and Accomodations: $82,901 (USD)

   1. Cab services

   2. Air travel 

   3. Trip accommodations and expenses

6. Product Research & Development + Business Consulting: $71,960 (USD)

   1. Consulting services

   2. External auditing

   3. Business strategy development

   4. Ongoing software development

   5. Development for upcoming Android app

7. Office/Overhead Costs: $30,786 (USD)

   1. Office rent

   2. Phone plans/airtime

   3. Wifi 

   4. Office supplies and printing

Note: A 10% contingency was added to the subtotal to obtain the final projected expenses.

The most immediate benefit that The Elevate Prize can supply Damu-Sasa with is capital. Financial restraints are the most pressing and imminent concern of the company, and prize money from the competition will greatly aid in scaling, expansion and continued development of our product. Furthermore, being considered for the Elevate Prize will advance and further legitimize Damu-Sasa’s position in the Kenyan and global space. Becoming a part of the respected and reputable cohort of Solvers will grant us powerful credibility that will mitigate skepticism around our product and help us to impact the negative cultural barrier surrounding blood transfusion in Kenya and East Africa. Access to The Elevate Prize’s powerful platform can help amplify the necessity and safety of blood transfusion across our ecosystem, allowing for better donor recruitment and blood services efficacy, overall resulting in further adoption of our platform.  Finally, as a small company, we are limited in the human resources and expertise of our team members in terms of business development, marketing and finance. Access to mentorship, professional development and expertise will be instrumental to Damu-Sasa’s continued success. Currently, we are looking to begin looking for strategic investment partners, and advice and connections from The Elevate Prize’s mentors will be beneficial in ensuring we find the most appropriate and advantageous equity partner. Overall, access to like-minded, innovative compatriots in the other Solver teams and the MIT Solve community will help with overcoming any continued cultural, financial and infrastructural challenges we encounter.

Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) has long supported the National and County Governments, playing an integral role in promoting safe and sustainable blood programmes. National Society activities range from the provision of the national blood service, systematic recruitment of voluntary blood donors, promotion of blood donation and advocacy for voluntary non-remunerated blood donation (VNRBD). Damu-Sasa would greatly benefit from the chance to learn from their experience in donor recruitment and mobilization. This would allow for identification of the most effective methods to recruit and recall a large proportion of donors. Furthermore, we expect their knowledge of donor behaviour to be invaluable in unpacking, analyzing, and improving the widespread distrust of blood donation in Kenyan society. Damu-Sasa has previously partnered with KRCS and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to run a national situation considerate blood drive amid COVID-19. Additionally, we aim to formalize a long-term relationship with the UNFPA to advance our impact on issues of maternal and newborn health. Maternal health facilities have been in dire need of blood over the course of the Kenyan blood shortage. We would like to leverage the UNFPA’s knowledge and connections in the field of maternal health to better understand how to serve this vulnerable population. It is expected that the intersection between maternal health needs and Damu-Sasa’s vision will continue to play an important role as we expand to new markets. In summary, we aim to operationalize these two relationships previously established during our community advocacy work into gainful, long-term partnerships.