Vitala Global Foundation

I will use the Elevate Prize to support my nonprofit, Vitala Global Foundation, to invest in the following:  

1) The growth and capacity of my team. I would provide each of my 3 team members the opportunity to expand their skills in project and financial management and hire a social media coordinator to grow our user base and brand through social media campaigns. 

2) As founder, my growth as a leader, activist and innovator. Vitala Global’s work requires strong cross-cultural communication and negotiation skills. To do this well, I have appreciated the power of being able to communicate in the local language, especially with the grassroots partners we engage in South America. Thus, I would like to enable my leadership and negotiation skills by enrolling in a Spanish immersion course. I am also interested in pursuing an MBA at Oxford’s Said Business School with a focus on social entrepreneurship.

3) The expansion of our core product, Aya Contigo. We are currently pilot testing in Venezuela and I would like to use funds for product development and improvement as we scale across Venezuela and the region to improve access to sexual and reproductive health for all Venezuelan migrants/refugees.

I will never forget one of my first maternal mortality experiences - a young Northern Nigerian girl died from an unsafe abortion. As a doctor, innovator and researcher, I yearn to understand the inequities women and girls' face by embedding myself completely within their communities. As the daughter of Indian immigrants, raised mostly by my uneducated teenage mother, I was sensitive to how women and girls were treated in my community. I pursued specialty training in obstetrics and gynecology with a focus on academia and innovation, to gain the skills as a women’s health expert. From my field experience with MSF and experience as a medical officer with WHO in Geneva, I noted the lack of a localized humanitarian response inclusive of the voices of vulnerable women and girls. This inspired me to establish Vitala Global Foundation.  I have led our team to co-design Aya Contigo, a mobile app that accompanies women through a safe self-managed medication abortion and contraception care journey. My future goals are to grow Vitala Global’s multidisciplinary team and to co-design localized solutions in challenging contexts to address preventable causes of maternal mortality and morbidity so that no woman or girl is left behind.

Humanitarian crisis' around the world have become more complex and protracted. Worldwide 35 million women and girls aged 15 - 45 require humanitarian assistance and this number continues to grow. Venezuela is one of the most fragile states in the world, with 11 million women and girls vulnerable to the crisis. They face increase in gender-based violence, high rates of unplanned pregnancies and maternal deaths and morbidity form unsafe abortions. The current humanitarian response has failed to address their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs. Vitala Global Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that is committed to co-designing open-source digital solutions with women and girls living in challenging contexts, like Venezuela, addressing stigmatized SRH issues, including abortion and contraception care. We seek to understand the challenges they experience when accessing SRH services through user-centered and rigorous research methodologies, in-depth contextual analyses and community engagement. We are a fully remote team with the core team of three members who are supported by a network of contracted partners, consultants and volunteers. Vitala Global has co-designed two products - Aya Contigo and myPostCare - both products that are supporting women and girls, living in challenging contexts to self-manage their abortion and contraception needs.

Our work is disruptive because of our unique method. This includes: user-centered research suited for humanitarian settings, design thinking approach, community engagement and an inclusive, diverse global team with a wide range of skills. Our design thinking approach is innovative because we have developed a fully remote way to conduct rigorous academic mixed-methods user-centered research with in-depth contextual analysis, stakeholder mapping and up-to-date UX/UI design strategies. Our diverse, fully remote, global multi-disciplinary team of women’s health experts, medical professionals, SRH activists, and public health and technology specialists are core to executing Vitala’s method.   

In order for our digital tools to be meaningful and impactful, we spend time with our intended users and engage their communities to hear the gaps they identify in accessing safe, up-to-date, and reliable SRH tools and services. We believe in collaborating with all SRH-related organizations working on the ground to ensure our work is inclusive, is not redundant and is complimenting their existing work. 

Our strength is our ability to build partnerships while also providing a rigorous design and research process to test digital solutions in complex humanitarian settings, to address the most stigmatized issues in SRH --  abortion and contraception care.

We define impact through our co-design process to develop last-mile digital solutions to decrease preventable maternal mortality and morbidity for those living in complex settings like Venezuela.  As a result of our process, we are raising awareness about neglected SRH issues. The steps we are taking to deliver impact include:

1. Deep contextual analysis and stakeholder engagement with local grassroots organizations who are embedded in the most vulnerable communities.

2. Mixed-methods implementation research and user-centered design that includes ongoing iterative user testing.

3. Implementation and knowledge translation strategies to improve uptake and dissemination of digital solutions.

4. Commitment to hiring team members from Latin America. For example, our UX/UI design researcher is from the Dominican Republic and various members of our research team are from Venezuela. 

5. Our developers for Aya Contigo, AnnieCannons, train and employee survivors of gender-based violence to be software developers.

6. Continuous commitment to our end-users by onboarding of every user to our platform, Aya Contigo.

7. Ongoing collaborations and partnership building with local groups across Venezuela and the region; exemplified by our MoUs. 

Aya Contigo is an example of these steps and through it the lives of over a dozen Venezuelan women have been saved to date.