The Big Change Blog

ayzh is a for-profit social venture providing health and livelihood solutions to underprivileged women worldwide.

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Saving Mother Earth, too!

As ayzh creates BIG CHANGE in the field of global health, contributing to the decrease in maternal and newborn mortality statistics, we have done so while keeping the environment in mind. When ayzh came onto the market, a few clean birth kits already existed. Several features separate our kit from others, one being our environmentally conscious intentions.

As you already know, our clean birth kit is packaged in a biodegradable jute purse, as opposed to a plastic zip-lock bag used by other makers of lean birth kits. This means, through the sale of our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse we have already saved over 700,000 kg of plastic use compared to other kits.   

ayzh is committed to finding suppliers of our components that are “Mother Earth friendly,” and we are continually exploring new materials and processes that take into account the full “lifecycle” of our kit. Our goal is to work  with other innovators of health technology to continually improve our components and get them closer to 100% biodegradable, without compromising sterility or quality of medical tools.  

We are inspired by all the innovation happening in appropriate health technology, as we can attest to through our collaboration with the Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) and MIT's D-Lab.  ayzh is confident in its promise to make a clean birth kit that earns Mother Earth’s approval.

Visit our Indiegogo campaign to get involved in the Big Change!

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Unite for Girl Rising

Have you heard of the film, Girl Rising, yet? This blog post is dedicated to the revolution that is emerging from this powerful and uplifting documentary, currently being screened in select communities across the country.

10x10, producers of the film, are aware of the many unfair obstacles that girls and women face everyday across the world. The film highlights the many challenges that girls confront across the globe, and how education is the most powerful tool for empowering girls to rise above adversity, better their lives, and change the world.

We also believe strongly in the power of education here at ayzh. Across the world, we see so many girls getting married and giving birth at a very young age, often deprived of knowledge and access to clean birth practices.  ayzh is also acutely aware the poor quality of rural health care systems, recognizing the HUGE need for educating women working as healthcare providers in resource-poor settings.

That is why EDUCATION is a core part of ayzh’s value chain, in two big ways:

Through our innovative Mobile Phone training program, we educate rural healthcare workers (primarily women) on the Six Cleans of Childbirth and how to use our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse properly.

During assembly of our kits, we empower women employees with both job training and the importance of reproductive health and clean birth practices, so that they can become spokespeople for their daughters and their communities.  

We believe there is a direct correlation between educating girls and improving health outcomes around the world.

This is an amazing movement around the world and we would love you to join us! 

Consider donating to our small purse BIG CHANGE campaign on Indiegogo, which is helping to fund our innovative education initiative.  

You can also visit www.girlrising.com to find or host a Girl Rising screening in your community.

Or, if you live in Colorado, you can attend a special Fort Collins screening of Girl Rising on September 19th. 

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Join the movement!

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"For Women, by Women" - Assembling a Better Future

ayzh strives to empower women through each aspect of our company, creating an overall better standard of living. Not only do we work to improve women’s health and ensure a clean and happy birth, we also aim to create financial and social advancement for the women we employ.

Our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse is created by women, for women. This unique dynamic helps to create a sustainable and empowering cycle of healthy and empowered women.

To date, ayzh has created 962,000 additional work hours for women, who enjoy working in a safe, social working environment in our product assembly center in Chennai, India.  

As our company scales, we aim to keep making bigger change by increasing the number of women we employ.

What does "ayzh employment" mean for women?

It means additional income for her family; the man in the household does not have to be the only breadwinner. Additional income means more funds can be dedicated to her children’s education; a higher likelihood that her family will be provided with the proper nutrients to live a successful life; and a greater probability that a woman and her family will have access to necessary health care.

We believe in empowering women because we see the ripple effect of change that will be created in her own life and in her children’s lives, ensuring BIG CHANGE for generations to come. By employing women, we mean that our small purse is creating BIG CHANGE in more ways than one.

Consider donating to our Indiegogo Campaign - funds raised will help us scale up operations, allowing us to also scale up our employment, education, and empowerment of women as well!

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The High Cost of Childbirth

  Overwhelmed by global maternal and infant mortality statistics? Feeling disconnected from an immense health problem facing women in places far away from home?

This post aims to provide some relevancy. Women everywhere face challenges surrounding childbirth, one of the most common and sacred acts.  Even in wealthier nations such as the United States, childbirth presents a surprising amount of financial burden and health risk.

  “Childbirth in the United States is uniquely expensive… The cumulative costs of approximately four million annual births is well over $50 billion.” -- New York Times, American Way of Birth, The Costliest in the World

  In contrast, it would only cost ayzh approximately $8 million dollars to save the lives of four million mothers and newborns (at $2 USD per birth kit).

When we talk about the “high costs of childbirth” in the US, we usually think in monetary terms.  The price tag on childbirth is around $10,000 for a conventional delivery and $15,000 for a caesarean section. That’s a lot of money - but, we’re getting the best care in the world… right?  Not quite.  Despite the US spending approximately $98 billion a year on hospitalization related to pregnancy and childbirth (costliest in the world), the The Huffington Post reported:

  “The United States currently ranks 50th in the world for maternal health. It is safer to give birth in Bosnia or Kuwait than in California.”

  Shocking, right? The US spends billions of dollars annually, yet we still have such a long way to go when it comes to being a leader on maternal health. Meanwhile, a mere $2 invested in the developing world can go a long way in giving millions of women access to the basic tools needed for a clean and safe birth.

Of course, there are many underlying complexities, but ayzh remains committed to simplicity and affordability with our $2 Clean Birth Kit in a Purse that can save and change the lives of millions.

This is why we are asking you to stand up for maternal and infant health rights around the world - both here in the United States and in the Developing World. We invite you to take an easy first step, - join our small purse BIG CHANGE campaign, where you can act in solidarity to help give all women access to an affordable and safe birth.

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"We exist as a commitment to save lives and change lives, one product at a time, making one happy woman at a time."

 Zubaida Bai - CEO and Founder of ayzh

"One Happy Woman at a Time"

ayzh designed its Clean Birth Kit in a Purse with the mother in mind.

Unlike other clean birth kits on the market, the sterile components of our kit come packaged in a small jute purse available in beautiful colors: white, pink, orange, earth tone, and a teal blue.

Our teal blue purse was actually created last year for Ovarian Cancer month. ayzh partnered with Ovarcome to distribute educational material about ovarian cancer in our blue kits, a partnership that received recognition by the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance.)

  Once the kit's sterile components get used by a skilled birth attendant to conduct a safe delivery, the purse is then given to the mother as a gift, recognizing childbirth as an important and courageous act of womanhood – a feeling that many mothers never get a chance to experience in many cultures, where women’s reproductive health issues are often extremely taboo.

Our small jute purse offers a more beautiful, personalized, and honorable birth experience, empowering new mothers with a simple and elegant congratulatory gift that they can carry and use in their everyday lives. For many women, it is the first purse they have ever owned -- and, one that once carried components that may have saved her life.

By supporting ayzh (pronounced “eyes”), you are creating a change much larger than the improved physical health of women and their newborns.  You are opening her “eyes” to see herself in a brighter light.  In contrast to more basic, crude birth kits on the market whose components are often contained in a zip-lock bag, ayzh looks at women’s health differently.  We value the happiness of a woman and strive to add an element of emotional health to such an important and vulnerable life event.

Visit our Indiegogo Campaign to see how you can support Big Change.

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Hospital vs. Home Birth

Both need clean birth solutions; however, ayzh does NOT target home births with our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse.  Why?  Here are a few key reasons:

Targeting home births is unsustainable, characterized by inefficient and costly distribution, and limited capacity to measure success and track outcomes, ultimately compromising impact and ability to scale.

Home births are NOT a recommended strategy for improving maternal and infant mortality rates. In much of the developing world, home births actually increase a woman’s chance of contracting an infection.

Global health experts are pushing for facility births (i.e., having a baby in a hospital, clinic, or other health-based institution) as an effective strategy for achieving MDG 4 and MDG 5. Many governments are providing incentives for women to deliver in a hospital, as a way to improve their country’s maternal and infant health outcomes.

Facility births are on the rise. Between 2005 and 2008, hospital births more than doubled to 55% of all births, according to UN figures. However…

Health facilities cannot handle this rapid influx of births. As a result, unsanitary conditions persist and infection rates remain high. The situation remains particularly dire in India, having the highest rates of maternal deaths worldwide, lagging behind MDG targets by almost 50% as reported by the UN.

Needless to say, and contrary to popular belief, hospital births are not as clean and safe as we would like to think.

This is why we are starting a “Clean Birth Revolution” targeting health facilities, where there is new need and growing demand for products that ensure sanitation and sterility at time of childbirth. Here we have the greatest opportunity to achieve significant and scalable impact on maternal and infant health outcomes via cost-effective distribution channels, established partnerships, and a systematic model for training healthcare workers on the “Six Cleans” of childbirth.

By supporting our Small Purse BIG CHANGE Campaign, you are contributing to two very special projects that will allow us to reach more hospitals with more kits, giving more mothers and babies a better chance for a happy, healthy start to life.

Pictured above is an Indian health facility that does not have proper sanitation or tools for a clean birth. Help us prevent births from happening in substandard circumstances such as these.

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What's Inside of the Small Purse?

Our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse is packed with the essential items needed for a safe and sanitary birth – things so basic that we tend to forget or underestimate their essentiality.  Components of our basic $2 (USD) kit include:

Blood absorbing sheet

Antibacterial soap

Sterile, surgical scalpel

Sterile cord clamp

These few items provide all of the Six Cleans in a beautiful small jute purse that goes home with the mother as a gift.  The Clean Birth Kit in a Purse can be customized based on hospitals’ needs to include additional components (e.g., sterilized gloves, antiseptic cream, and sanitary pads). Depending on how many components clients choose to add on, the cost of the kits can range from $2-5 dollars and can be shipped anywhere in the world.

Sound too simple to be true?

Research shows that these basic tools can have the potential to have a big impact in the world of maternal and infant health. ayzh has developed a way to make these simple tools available to even the most remote and resource-poor regions, and continues to offer the most cost-effective clean birth kit solution on the market.

Still, there is room for us to grow and create even bigger change.  We want to get these components into the hands of MILLIONS of women.  To do this, we need to build up some infrastructure -- research (to measure our impact) and education (to train healthcare workers).

Visit our Indiegogo Campaign to find out how you can get involved in making these life-saving components available to MILLIONS more mothers and newborns.  

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The Six Cleans of Childbirth

As illuminated in a previous post, infection is one of the leading preventable causes of maternal and infant death.  So, how does preventable infection translate into infection prevented?

The World Health Organization developed what is known as the “Six Cleans” necessary for a clean, sterile, infection-free childbirth – incredibly simple solutions, but easier said than done in resource-poor settings.  Take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of a rural health care worker in India:

Your job is to help a mother bring a baby into the world…

The delivery room is dusty and dirty, your tools still covered in blood from the last birth…

You know this to be risky and unsafe…

Still, you have no way to sanitize your hands or instruments…

There’s not enough time or staff in between deliveries to keep your working environment clean...

You lack sufficient training and support to handle such impossible conditions…

You do the best you can but realize this problem is out of your control...

  Our life-saving Clean Birth Kit in a Purse is a “one stop shop” that provides each of these six cleans, and is designed to offer convenience, quality, customization, and affordability to even the poorest hospitals.  One simple kit holds all the tools needed to prevent a birth from being conducted in an unclean and unsafe environment.

Stay tuned for our next blog, which will explain each of the components in our Clean Birth Kit that enforces each of the Six Cleans!

In the meantime, visit our Small Purse BIG CHANGE Campaign to become part of the global movement to standardize clean birth practices and increase access to the “Six Cleans” of childbirth for all women around the world.

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Imagine living with a 1 in 4 chance of dying from a preventable infection...

We don’t often worry about infection during childbirth in the Developed World – it is easy to take our relatively easy access to hospitals, high medical standards, and sterilization processes for granted.  Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, women do not have access to these basic rights, and infection remains a leading cause of both maternal and infant death despite its preventability.

ayzh is committed to altering this reality. Our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse (called “Janma,” meaning birth in Hindi), is designed and packaged to prevent infection. It provides healthcare workers in resource-poor settings with access to sterilized tools. It also serves as an innovative platform for our mobile phone training program, which educates healthcare workers on clean birth practices.  

Our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse reduces the risk of infection and the chance that mother and baby will die during the vulnerable time of childbirth.

Stay tuned for our upcoming blog post about each of the vital components inside of our kit! For now, visit our Indiegogo Campaign to learn how you can take part in the global movement to keep childbirth infection-free.

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A Day in the Life of our Clean Birth Kit in a Purse

  This video takes you on a journey, following our small purse as it travels from an assembly room in Chennai, India to hospital rooms and healthcare workers around the world, and ultimately into the hands of happy new mamas.

ayzh would like to take a moment to send out a BIG THANKS to our two summer interns for creating this animated journey (along with many other informational materials) that beautifully capture the BIG CHANGE that our small purse creates throughout its life. We couldn’t be prouder of Nicole and Megan for their time, commitment, creativity, brilliant ideas, and energizing smiles. Our Small Purse, BIG CHANGE Campaign wouldn’t be the same without them.

  Nicole Jorgenson (Colorado College)

Megan Sanders (University of Colorado Boulder)

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MDG 4: Progress on Infant Health with One Exception

  Millennium Development Goal #4 – reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the infant mortality ratio.

  The good news is that the rate of under-five deaths is declining overall. The bad news is that  the proportion of infant deaths that occur in the first month after birth is increasing. 

  The most vulnerable time for both the mother and newborn is during birth and in the hours and days immediately after childbirth. Around 75 percent of neonatal deaths occur during the first week of life, with the majority in the first 48 hours. In populations with very high neonatal mortality, up to half of neonatal deaths may have an infectious cause.

  Our Small Purse BIG CHANGE campaign aims to engage the global community to make an effective and affordable intervention available where and when newborns need it most. Increased access to Janma Clean Birth Kit  will contribute to important decreases in the number of newborns who die from preventable causes thus contributing to the achievement of Millennium Development Goal #4!

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MDG 5: Is Improving Maternal Health Possible?

The United Nations and ayzh think so!

Aiming to meet the needs of the world’s poorest, the United Nations set eight Millennium Development Goals to be attained by 2015. From poverty to education, the goals are intended to tackle the world’s most complex and tragic problems.

Millennium Development Goal #5A – reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.

  Although the number of annual maternal deaths has nearly halved since 1990, numbers are still astonishingly high. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), (600 women die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy).

  India and Africa are two of the largest contributors to this statistic. A woman in Sub-Saharan Africa has about a 1 in 16 percent chance of dying in pregnancy and childbirth. India, with the highest number of births per annum, makes up about 20% of the world’s burden of maternal deaths. Focusing efforts in these areas is crucial if we want to reach our goals by 2015.

  The only positive thing about this sobering situation is that we can easily do something about it. Ayzh  is already improving maternal health by increasing access to clean birth practices.  With your help, we’ll be able to scientifically measure our impact on reducing maternal mortality. In the words of the WHO, “Let’s step up our efforts” and attain Millennium Development Goal #5!  

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Small Purse, BIG CHANGE

So you’re probably wondering what this whole “Small Purse, Big Change” campaign is about.

Take a second to imagine a woman’s purse changing the world.  Now let us tell you how our purse is doing just that.

  It all started with an idea born in Chennai, India, where Zubaida Bai (founder of ayzh) contracted a hospital infection while bringing her first child into the world, learning soon after that she would not be able to have another child as a result. At this moment, she swore to herself that no woman should die or suffer from a preventable cause during childbirth.  

  Zubaida, a passionate and accomplished product engineer, dreamt of a beautiful small purse that contained all the simple, life-saving tools needed for childbirth – a purse that would then travel home with new mothers as a gift, not only providing an infection-free start to life, but also creating a feeling of importance and self-worth as part of the birthing experience.

Within two years, Zubaida turned this dream into a reality. While earning her MBA at Colorado State University, she founded ayzh on her award-winning design of the Janma Clean Birth Kit, and found immediate success.  Medical institutions started purchasing these convenient, customizable kits to prevent deadly and debilitating infections; and ayzh began employing low-income Indian women to assemble the kits, offering what is currently the most cost effective, environmentally friendly, and economically empowering kit on the market.

  So what now?  We already know this small purse is capable of BIG CHANGE (we’ve impacted sixty thousand women and newborns to date); but we don’t want to stop here.  We want to impact millions. But first, we need to complete two very important projects outlined in our campaign.

  By joining the Small Purse BIG CHANGE Movement, you’re creating a clean birth revolution, one small purse at a time. Welcome aboard.

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Final Countdown to the Big Change!

Exciting things are happening at ayzh! On Monday, August 19th, we are launching a 35-day Indiegogo Campaign to kick-start two important projects.  Indiegogo, similar to Kickstarter, is a crowdfunding platform that allows individuals and organizations to raise not only funds, but also global awareness through an online campaign.

  “Small Purse, Big Change” is the name of our campaign. It goes live in one week on August 19th and ends on September 21st, World Gratitude Day – a day to be grateful for the clean birth conditions that we have access to in the developed world, and give thanks to our campaign backers who help make these conditions a reality for mothers and babies worldwide.

  So, you may be wondering: What exactly is a clean birth kit? What does it look like? What’s inside? Why do they call it a small purse and how does it create big change?

  Stay tuned for a set of blog posts throughout our campaign that will answer these questions and more.  Our small purse is already making a big impact in the lives of women, and your involvement can help create even bigger change.  We invite you to share our posts with your friends, family, and coworkers – together we can make our campaign go viral! 

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Welcome to the Big Change Blog! Here you’ll find posts, videos, photos and awesome infographics about our company and how we’re making a difference in the lives of impoverished women and newborns around the world. Our organization is growing and we’re embarking on some awesome adventures in the world of global and maternal health! Stay tuned for upcoming posts! In the meantime, check out this video to learn a bit more of what we’re all about!