#ayzh

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The Story of ayzh

We’ve partnered with ayzh (pronounced eyes) this Mother’s Day to give back to new moms around the world. With each purchase made on Given Goods through May 11th, we will donate one clean birth kit to a new mom to fight persistent but preventable delivery room infections. 

1 purchase / 2 lives changed

Yet, there are problems the Republic of India isn’t ready to face: poverty, corruption and discrimination against women and girls are mainstays in a land of much diversity. In poor and rural areas of India, mother and infant mortality rates are especially high. 80% of healthcare facilities are located in urban areas, while 72% of the population lives rurally. As such, access to basic healthcare and life-saving technologies is grossly limited.

Enter: Zubaida Bai. As a young girl growing up in India, she “saw women being abused and their needs never considered. They only existed to look after the kitchen and children.” Bai, who at 14 told her parents she wanted to become an engineer, would often see her peers being impregnated by older men, only to give birth in unsafe conditions where they would often lose their children.

As a teenager, Bai took a job at a new bank in her town opening checking accounts. The money she made went back to her family, enabling her mother to start a tailoring shop. The money helped the family purchase a car, which Bai alone drove. A second tailoring shop was opened. Eventually, Bai found herself in Sweden, working towards a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Then, she returned home to marry.

It was only after Bai gave birth to her son that she understood the dire condition of the women in her country. 15% of the 20 million births in India manifest in debilitating infections. Bai was part of that 15%. In 2011, the Maternal Health Task Force estimated the combined rates of mother and neonatal deaths due to unclean births reached 1 million. Hundreds of thousands of mothers and children were suffering due to prevalent but preventable diseases. Bai threw herself into product development and in 2011, she founded ayzh.

A social enterprise aimed at bringing technology solutions to women in rural areas, Bai uses her passion and experience to support new moms in India, Haiti, Ghana, Malawi and Nigeria through a clean birthing kit called the JANMA. The JANMA contains a sterile sheet, antiseptic soap, a cord clamp, a surgical blade, a pair of gloves and a baby wiping cloth. These six simple, but vital tools are beautifully packaged in a jute purse, enabling mothers to focus on what matters: their wellbeing and their children.

Since 2011, ayzh has directly impacted more than 76,000 women. Ayzh also employs women to package the kits—providing them with 962,000 additional work hours in safe, social working environment in Chennai, India. This means additional income for women and their families—and more money allocated to their children. 

With their sights set high, ayzh is working towards employing upwards of 4,000 women with a goal of distributing more than 1 million JANMA kits by 2015. Those JANMA kits have the potential to impact 3 million women and children across India, Africa and the Caribbean. 

This Mother's Day, Given Goods and ayzh are working together to distribute a JANMA kit to a mother in need with every purchase made. From now through May 11th, 1 purchase will mean that two lives are changed—and those two lives will go on to impact so many more. 

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Celebrate the mom in your life with Given Goods and ayzh! For each item purchased on Given Goods through May 11th, a birth kit will be donated to a woman in an impoverished community. These birth kits are not only integral to expecting mothers, but they save lives and keep families together.

[ayzhinc]

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!

[ayzhinc]

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. 

[ayzhinc]

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.