Begina Cox in an interview with Mark Virgil Jamer. Get ready to be captivated by an inspiring conversation with Mark, the CEO of Rise Rural Philippines. Mark's profound mission is to uplift the lives of Filipinos in rural communities through innovative solutions, and he's making waves with his groundbreaking creation, the Araw-Kalinga Box. This box is a highly efficient portable kit with solar power technology that can provide maternal and infant health care anywhere.
In this interview, Mark shares his personal journey, which was deeply influenced by his family's background in healthcare, especially his mother and grandmother, who were midwives. Growing up, he witnessed the challenges faced by pregnant mothers in rural areas, where access to quality healthcare was a distant dream. This experience ignited a fire within him to create lasting change.
The Araw-Kalinga Box is a true game-changer in maternal and infant healthcare. Powered by solar technology, this portable kit is equipped with an ultrasound machine, a cold box for storing perishable medicines, and essential delivery instruments. It's a lifeline for communities with limited access to healthcare services, bringing hope and potentially saving lives.
Mark’s passion, determination, and commitment to making a difference are a true testament to the power of youth-led innovation and social entrepreneurship.
Begina Cox: Mark, it is an absolute delight to engage in this conversation with you. The last occasion we crossed paths was during the grant awards organised by the Ashley Lashley Foundation, where I had the privilege of serving on the panel. The occasion showcased numerous remarkable pitches, but your project left an indelible impression on me. Your revolutionary Araw-Kalinga Box is truly captivating. However, before we delve into a deeper discussion about your groundbreaking creation, I would be grateful if you could provide us with some insights about your background and personal journey.
Growing up, I witnessed many lives being born at home and, sadly, many lives that did not get to see the light. I noticed that many of our patients were from far-flung communities and travelled for more than three hours.
As a young man, I understand that some might find it intriguing why I care so much about maternal health. I come from a family of healthcare workers, specifically midwives. My mother is a midwife, as is my grandmother. My parents converted half of our house into a maternity clinic when we were still living in our home province, Eastern Samar, because there was none before—we only had the government hospital, which was too expensive for most families. Since our clinic was family-run, I would help my mother with basic tasks such as cleaning the clinic or sanitizing the tools.
Growing up, I witnessed many lives being born at home and, sadly, many lives that did not get to see the light. I noticed that many of our patients were from far-flung communities and travelled for more than three hours. While they may have government clinics in their area, they are often lacking in electricity and medical devices due to geographical challenges. At such an age, I knew that access to healthcare was more difficult for people in rural areas and that it had to be changed. This is how I became an advocate for health equity and eventually started Rise Rural Philippines. While ideating our product, these experiences were my motivations because, up until now, the inaccessibility of healthcare services in our home province remains pertinent.
I believe that access to quality healthcare is a right and having seen all these first hand as a kid inspired me to advocate for health equity and think about maternal care.
While I am pursuing business management and entrepreneurship for my undergraduate degree, I plan to go to medical school afterward, which would be beneficial to my role in our health-related social enterprise. Ever since we left our home province, I have always dreamed of going back to serve there as a way of paying it forward. Remembering where I came from is what always motivates me to continue advocating. In the future, I hope to be involved in community development in my hometown through social entrepreneurship.
Begina: Now, let’s talk about the Box. Could you share with us a simplified explanation of your project and what drove you to invent the Araw-Kalinga Box. Lastly, could you enlighten us about the significance behind its name?
Mark Virgil Jamer: Electricity is essential in providing maternal and infant health care. This is not a problem for people living in urban areas; however, for the 30% of Filipinos who have little to no access to electricity in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDA), the lack of a reliable power source may cost lives. Imagine a pregnant mother living in a remote community who is miles away from the nearest hospital. To receive her weekly or monthly prenatal check-ups, she would have to spend money on a motorized pump boat to cross the sea or ride a motorcycle to pass through a rocky, mountainous path to arrive at a rural health clinic. Instead of going through this strenuous journey, she would rather stay at home and show up to a barrio doctor a few hours before giving birth. Having no check-ups before giving birth is one of the reasons why 121 mothers and 210 infants die every year in the Philippines.
AKB-Prototype Mark Virgil Jamer
Having no check-ups before giving birth is one of the reasons why 121 mothers and 210 infants die every year in the Philippines.
After delving into the narratives of barrio doctors, our team found out that there are still no innovative solutions being made to address the problem of having no electricity in maternal and infant health care in the country. Pregnancy complications due to the inaccessibility of prenatal check-ups remain a daily encounter for doctors. One doctor in the barrio mentioned that "ultrasound machines are 4 hours and P300 away" from where they are assigned, leaving them no choice but to deliver the infant despite the possible risks.
In Filipino, the word "araw" means "sun," and the word "kalinga" means "care." This box is a highly efficient portable kit with solar power technology that can provide maternal and infant health care anywhere.
Due to the lack of solutions to this problem, our team created the Araw-Kalinga Box. In Filipino, the word "araw" means "sun," and the word "kalinga" means "care." This box is a highly efficient portable kit with solar power technology that can provide maternal and infant health care anywhere. It contains three compartments: an ultrasound machine, a cold box, and pregnancy tools. The first compartment contains a solar-powered ultrasound machine that enables barrio doctors to diagnose pregnant mothers without recommending them to go to a hospital. The second compartment is a vaccine carrier where perishable medicines can be stored. Lastly, the third compartment contains a space for delivery instruments such as scissors, needle holders, clamps, forceps, and pipettes.
Begina: Have any similar creations or innovations caught your attention in the past? I am curious to learn about the journey that led to the invention of the Araw-Kalinga Box, as well as your current progress. Furthermore, could you share your ultimate goal for utilising this Box? Are you actively seeking investors for your project? Have you considered protecting it as your own invention and potentially selling the patent? I am eager to grasp the significance of the Box in relation to its potential market share.
Community Consultation - Mark Virgil Jamer
Mark Virgil Jamer: When we were ideating our product, we did research on similar existing innovations, and we found two that, while not necessarily alike, somehow had similarities in the sense that they catered to far-flung communities: one in the Philippines and another based in South Africa. The one in the Philippines is mainly for diagnostics only and should be plugged in when the battery runs out. On the other hand, the one in South Africa also has solar panels but is stationary, which means that the product has to be fixed or stationed in the clinic. Considering these existing innovations and understanding the problem in the context of the Philippines, we thought of highlighting three unique and important features of our product: portability, variety of patient cases that can be catered to, and a clean and renewable energy source.
(...) three unique and important features of our product: portability, variety of patient cases that can be catered to, and a clean and renewable energy source.
Currently, we already have a working prototype, which is currently being tested in our first target community. We have a mentor who is a professional electrical engineer and a professor who helps us in this process. We are lucky to have a very diverse team because we have a team member who is an engineering student who does the assembling of the product. As soon as we get the first user’s feedback by January, we are planning to develop it and manufacture more boxes. Our ultimate goal with the use of the box is that it becomes the rural doctor’s go-to kit—that aside from using the traditional bags, they use the product when doing community visits as it is supposed to be an all-in-one medical kit.
What’s challenging about tech-based products is that they require a substantial amount of capital. Fortunately, we were able to raise enough to kickstart the implementation stage by joining grant-giving competitions, including the Hey Global Climate Fund. However, we remain hopeful and welcome investors interested in our social enterprise. In fact, we are under Prokompas Indonesia’s impact investment mentorship.
Securing a patent is one of our goals for our innovation. We have already started preparing for this, and we hope to start our application for a patent as soon as we are done developing it. However, we do not have any plans yet for selling the patent in the future. Furthermore, we think that our innovation has good market potential. Considering that there are over 10,875 geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas in the Philippines, the total amount of opportunity amounts to approximately 4 million USD.
Begina: Have you considered the possibility of collaborating with other charitable organisations to promote the widespread adoption of the Araw-Kalinga Box?
Mark Virgil Jamer: Yes. I strongly believe that partnerships are key to the success of the project. Currently, we are already working with organisations like the United Nations Development Programme in the Philippines and Prokompas in Indonesia. These organizations help us by providing mentorship, networks, and financial support. What we want to achieve next is partnering with charities or organizations that would help us in terms of getting the products down to the communities, like medical mission organizations or NGOs advocating for climate action and health equity. We already have initial ideas of whom to reach out to, and we do hope we will be able to gain partners within the implementation period.
Begina: I'd love to hear more about Rise Rural Philippines —tell me about your team members, your mission, and what you're striving to achieve. I'm also curious about your beginnings. How did it all start?
Mark Virgil Jamer: Rise Rural Philippines is a youth-led social enterprise that aims to uplift the lives of Filipinos in rural communities with the use of innovative solutions. Our team is composed of three undergraduate students, who are: Christian King Condez, the Communications and Marketing Chief Officer, who is also studying Biology at the Ateneo de Manila University; Mher John Tan, the Chief Operations Officer and Chief Technology Officer, who is studying Computer Science at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (University of the City of Manila); and me, the Chief Executive Officer, who is studying Agribusiness Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of the Philippines Los Banos. We also have a mentor, Mr Byran Nobleza, a professional electrical engineer who used to be a professor in the college of engineering at my university. We also consult with doctors with experience working in rural communities.
Our team began in January 2022 in an innovation competition. Although we did not reach the finals, we were one of the shortlisted candidates who were considered for the final round. Despite being busy with our studies, we continued to join grant competitions. On our second try, we won as top 2 in the Youth Social Innovation Lab of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the Philippines and Edukasyon.ph. With the grant, we were able to finally kickstart our project with our first community beneficiary. Fortunately, this accomplishment was followed by winning first place in the Prokompas Social Entrepreneurship Innovation Challenge in Indonesia, first place in the UNIPLAT Pitch Deck Award in Switzerland, a finalist in the Go Youth! Global Open Call by the Social Innovation in Health Initiative in China, and semi-finalists in the US Department of State's GIST Catalyst Pitch Competition in Thailand.
As a team committed to promoting health equity and climate action in the country, we hope to reach each rural community in the Philippines with our innovation and provide them with accessible healthcare services.
As a team committed to promoting health equity and climate action in the country, we hope to reach each rural community in the Philippines with our innovation and provide them with accessible healthcare services. Since our innovation also uses solar power, we also aim to raise awareness among fellow Filipinos about renewable energy sources, which are untapped sources in our country, to combat climate change.
Begina: What obstacles you are currently tackling both in relation to the Araw-Kalinga Box and your work with Rise Rural Philippines?
Mark Virgil Jamer: Regarding the Araw-Kalinga Box, securing partnerships with suppliers is one of our main challenges. A long-term partnership with suppliers minimizes cost, and as an early-stage social enterprise with very limited resources, this is what we really want to achieve. We have already tried contacting a few companies, but they would not agree to become partners since our production volume is not large enough yet. What we are planning to do instead, which is something that we have been trying to do already, is avail ourselves of the Department of Science and Technology’s programs and services for tech-based enterprises like ours. These programs include supply assistance.
As for Rise Rural Philippines, what has challenged us the most so far is keeping people on the team. Since we started, a few have left already, but, fortunately, some have filled in. It is really challenging for us as undergraduate students to balance our tasks in the enterprise with our school requirements, especially during our first few months. When we started, we had to use our own money to travel to our first target community to conduct a consultation, apply to several grant-giving competitions, and attend entrepreneurship workshops. This is the reason why I am so proud of my team because, if anything, making it here as one of the grantees of the Hey! Global Climate Fund says a lot about my and my teammates' passion and determination to really make a difference. Of course, as the leader of the team, I have learned a lot about managing people and creating a healthy work environment. In the next few months, we will be having some more people join the team, and I am just so excited to make the journey fun and worthwhile.
Begina: Do you have any ongoing projects apart from your remarkable work on the Araw-Kalinga Box?
Mark Virgil Jamer: I and my other team members in RRP, Mher and Christian, are also working on another climate change education project called "Ating KlimaStorya" or "Our Climate Story" in English. We believe that climate action in the past few years has made very little progress, and that is partly caused by how it is communicated to people. In order to get climate change concepts down to communities, we believe that we can share personal stories, which are very powerful in connecting and mobilizing people. In this project, we train young leaders on how to effectively become storytellers of climate change in their own communities through writing, the visual arts, photography, and film. We are just so passionate about climate action that we pitched this project to a US Embassy-funded competition back in May of this year, and fortunately, we were awarded a grant to implement it. This year, we were able to train 20 young climate storytellers from different coastal provinces in the Philippines and produce 20 climate storytelling outputs.
We believe that climate action in the past few years has made very little progress, and that is partly caused by how it is communicated to people.
Begina: What lies ahead as Mark takes his next momentous stride? We're eager to discover the grand plans and aspirations fuelling his journey. Furthermore, we'd be intrigued to learn about the hopes that inspire him and the apprehensions that may accompany his forthcoming venture.
Mark Virgil Jamer: After being selected as one of the grantees of the Hey Global Climate Fund, my next big step is to focus on the implementation of our project to make sure we accomplish our goals for the enterprise, which is to reach 13 rural communities, 50,000 mothers, and 2,000 infants by next year. Since we founded the enterprise, we have tirelessly been joining grant-giving competitions in order to raise enough capital, and I am just extremely grateful that we were selected to receive this award because it surely will impact a lot of people.
In addition, I am also currently applying our social enterprise to a highly competitive start-up accelerator program abroad, which is a great opportunity for us as a small enterprise that hopes to upscale. Also, this is a learning and networking opportunity, which is something that I give great importance to as a young social entrepreneur. For the past few months, I grabbed every opportunity to participate in local and international entrepreneurship workshops and networking opportunities. We’re expected to receive the result by January, so this is definitely one of my hopes for the start of the year 2023.
Honestly, one of my major fears is failing to meet what is expected of me as the leader of the team. Often times, I find myself asking if I am competent enough to manage the project when I think of how big our vision is and how challenging handling a tech-based project is. When thoughts like this come to my mind, I just always remind myself that opportunities would not have come in the first place if I was not competent and that I should take one step forward at a time. I am also very thankful that I have a very supportive team that is just as passionate about advocacy and determined to get things done as I am.
Since access to basic necessities should be everyone’s right, I wish no one had to skip a meal, drop out of school, or neglect sickness.
Begina: If there was one thing you could ask for in life, what would it be?
Mark Virgil Jamer: If I could ask for one thing in life, that would be for everyone to have access to at least basic necessities, such as quality healthcare. My family was living in a rural province until we moved out when I was thirteen years old because my parents wanted to give us a better life. In our home province, there were very few opportunities, such as in education and employment. Healthcare services are also difficult to access for most families due to the distance of health facilities and the poor economic situation. I know what it feels like to lose hope because my family has been there. Since access to basic necessities should be everyone’s right, I wish no one had to skip a meal, drop out of school, or neglect sickness. While this wish seems very lofty, this is what we hope to achieve at Rise Rural Philippines, one rural clinic at a time.
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