The Adara Group

I want to stand on the highest mountain top right now with a loudspeaker - and inspire as many people as I can to make change in our world! Winning this Award would be a huge “loudspeaker” for change. We see unrest, polarity and humanitarian crises everywhere we look. In a time when we should be coming together, we are building walls instead of bridges. I want to be part of changing that.

For 23 years the Adara Group has been creating models that others can learn from and copy to amplify impact. We are experts in maternal newborn and child health care in low resource settings and in health and education service delivery in remote places. We are also pioneers in the business for purpose movement.

It is now time for Adara to scale. It is time for us to use our lived experience to show what is possible when people from one end of the world to the other stand together to make change.

These funds would allow us to scale our work caring for premature and low birth weight babies in low resource settings, across Uganda and more broadly across the developing world.

I grew up as a little girl in New Zealand. I don’t remember a time when I was not aware that if I had been born a little girl in a different country, my life would have been totally different.

I am just as passionate now about making change as I was when I was young. Thanks to a hugely fortunate career through law, banking and insurance, I was able to set up Adara as a model of what can happen when we bridge the worlds of the most advantaged and the most disadvantaged people.

The Adara Group has two parts, an international development organization, Adara Development, and two corporate advisory businesses. The sole objective of the businesses is to fund Adara Development’s administration and core support costs, allowing 100% of all other donations received to go directly to project-related costs.

We are a unique organisation. We combine business for purpose, care to at-risk mothers and newborns, and very remote health and education service delivery.

I have three simple goals for Adara – in the decades ahead, we must touch as many lives as we can, excel in our areas of expertise, and help millions more through knowledge sharing.

Prematurity is the leading cause of death worldwide for children under five. An additional 2 million under-five deaths could occur globally in just 12 months due to COVID related reductions in health service. The vast majority of these deaths will occur in low-income countries.

We are sitting on the precipice of a global newborn mortality crisis and we must do all that we can to fight this.

Since 1998, Adara’s work has focused on strengthening maternal newborn and child health (MNCH) services in Uganda. Working in partnership with Kiwoko Hospital, a non-profit hospital in central Uganda which serves a catchment area of one million people, we have demonstrated the impact of an integrated model of care. This encompasses training, clinical support and high standard facility and community-based care across antenatal, maternity and neonatal intensive care. Kiwoko Hospital has been named a national Centre of Excellence in newborn care and this pioneering model has global ramifications. We are members of the National Newborn Steering Committee in Uganda and have been working with the Ministry of Health for a number of years, laying the foundations for us to now move to scale.

Adara is contrarian by nature and from our inception, has focused on evidence based, best practice service delivery to people in extreme poverty no matter what. We were amongst the first in the world to believe that high quality, tertiary care to preterm and low birth weight babies in remote areas was possible. 

Adara thrives on innovation. One example of this is our work contributing to the development a safe Bubble CPAP kit, with a unique oxygen blending system to treat babies suffering from respiratory distress syndrome in low resource settings. This is a world first and has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of newborns across the world.

In addition our business for purpose model marks a significant evolution in traditional philanthropy. Our businesses have brought the concept of purpose to the highest levels of the Australian financial services sector. Adara Partners has an innovative Panel Member structure with some of Australia’s most respected investment bankers and advisors working for Adara without recompense, giving advice to Australia’s largest companies. The power of this model is evidenced by its success and I intend to expand Adara partners to the world’s largest financial services centres. 

Adara’s impact spans service delivery to hundreds of thousands of people in need, plus countless more through knowledge sharing and demonstrates what is truly possible globally. By way of example our unwavering mission has meant that 40,000 women have given birth safely and more than 10,500 of the tiniest newborns have received expert care

Even more importantly, Adara has demonstrated that newborn deaths can be dramatically reduced in facilities and communities with the right holistic care. At our Centre of Excellence more than 90% of sick and vulnerable newborns now survive and maternal deaths as a proportion of hospital births has fallen by 20%. We have been able to reach thousands of women through our community outreach (safe motherhood) clinics and have followed-up over 94% of our high-risk infants in communities by a network of trained community health volunteers in Uganda.

An example of our scale and knowledge sharing is the recent publication of our Hospital to Home (H2H) protocol paper in BMJ Open. The H2H programme addresses a critical gap in newborn care – providing follow-up support to high-risk infants in low-resource settings.

Countless more lives will be impacted and saved as we take this work to scale.