2024 Global Health Equity Challenge
Improving digital access to reproductive care for vulnerable communities
What is the name of your solution?
Improving digital access to reproductive care for vulnerable communities
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
Aya Contigo is a digital application that accompanies vulnerable people through their medication abortions and contraceptive journeys.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Vancouver, BC, CanadaIn what country is your solution team headquartered?
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Globally women are suffering from or dying of unsafe abortions*, which are entirely preventable. 1 in 3 women experience an abortion in their lifetime. 73 million abortions occur every year, and 45% will be unsafe. Every year, 7 million women and girls are injured or disabled by complications from unsafe abortions, and 22,000 women and girls die as a result of unsafe abortions. Those living in rural, isolated, low-resource, humanitarian crises, or where abortion is restricted and stigmatized face insurmountable inequities in achieving their sexual and reproductive health goals. Enabling pregnant individuals' agency through access to safe medical abortion and contraception is lifesaving.
Unsafe abortion still accounts for at least one in 12 maternal deaths globally. When compared to reductions in all the other direct causes of maternal deaths since 1990—severe bleeding (or post-partum hemorrhage), severe infection, blood pressure disorders, and obstructed labor—there has been little improvement in the negative impact of unsafe abortion.
We focus on highly restrictive and challenging contexts, where women, girls, and gender-diverse people have the least access to essential sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. In Latin America and the Caribbean, women face multiple barriers to freely exercising their reproductive rights, including restrictive abortion legislation. In Venezuela, access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services has been one of the most neglected issues. Venezuela has the highest adolescent pregnancy rates in South America, has a scarcity index of contraceptive methods of 83 to 91%, and has a highly restrictive legal framework for abortions, only legal when the life of the woman is at risk. Due to the severe socio-political and economic crisis, Venezuela has also witnessed the second-largest external displacement crisis in the world, where people are migrating to escape violence, insecurity and threats, and lack of food, medicine, and essential services. In Central America there are an estimated 1,320,000 elective abortions annually. There are an estimated 5,390,000 pregnancies annually, and miscarriages account for around 26% of all pregnancies, which is around 1,401,400. In Guatemala, abortion is only permitted if the mother's life is at deadly risk. Similar to Venezuela, where Vitala Global has been working the last 3 years, health factors and lack of access to affordable evidence based care significantly augment maternal mortality. Currently, Guatemala is the first country in the region to have Mifepristone registered. The United States (U.S.) is also a highly restrictive context, where abortion bans threaten 6.7 million Latinas - the largest group of women of color living under bans in the U.S. Latinas in three states — Florida, Texas, and Arizona — account for nearly three-quarters of the Latinas living in the states that have banned or are likely to ban abortions. More than 1 million Latinas in these states report not speaking English or not speaking it well, a substantial barrier to accessing and receiving culturally competent care. The U.S. became the second country where Aya Contigo was made available.
What is your solution?
Our innovation, Aya Contigo is an interactive progressive web application with offline capability, that includes optional WhatsApp notifications and virtual live chat support to accompany women through a safe, self-managed medication abortion and family planning journey. Aya is rights-based, inclusive, non-judgemental and uses language to de-stigmatize abortion. It provides evidence-based, reliable private digital resources to avoid unsafe abortions.
Aya was developed when we identified the need for reliable contextualized digital safe abortion and contraception information to help prevent unsafe abortions and unplanned pregnancies. We identified the need from our human-centered design research in 2020 with over 1000 Venezuelan women and a dozen grassroots organizations and sexual and reproductive health activists. There is increasing evidence highlighting women's experiences globally who self-manage their abortions through accompaniment models (hotlines, in-person accompaniment, telemedicine) that these tools provide a person-centered approach with key aspects of dignity, trust, support, and effective communication.
Aya Contigo is a highly effective digital support platform because of these three interconnected key pillars:
1. Aya Contigo App: contains reliable up-to-date harm reduction information to self-manage an abortion safely and personalized contraception decision-making
2. Aya Care Team: a team of local Venezuelan staff that provides virtual accompaniment that is trauma-informed and healing-centered, and connects users to trusted referrals
3. Aya Community Engagement Team: a team of Venezuelan staff that represent youth and the rural communities to support mobilizing a network of trustedSRH partners
Aya takes the user step-by-step to support self-management of medication abortion, starting with self-assessment of eligibility (how far along in the pregnancy and whether any medical conditions would prevent a self-managed abortion with pills). Aya then explains what the actual pills should look like, what to expect after the user takes them, and how to take them safely. The app then takes the user through the possible side effects and highlights when the user should seek medical attention. Aya provides users with a validated questionnaire for them to self-assess if their abortion is safely completed. Throughout, Aya offers self-care strategies and the opportunity to connect in real-time with our Aya Care Team who support users as they go through their journey and connect them to a trusted referral network. Users can also choose to have personalized support by opting into WhatsApp notifications that include timed reminders of when to take the next pills, and weekly check-ins with the user to see how they are doing and to provide ongoing emotional support. At the end of the abortion journey, Aya gives the option of going through a contraception journey where several questions are asked to find a contraceptive method that best suits the users’ needs.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
We serve women, girls, gender-diverse people, and occasionally their partners who have access to a computer, smartphone, or tablet and are seeking information, access to services, and/or emotional support. In 2023, 59% of chat users were between 20 and 31 years old. We do not collect age or gender data on app users.
In Venezuela, most users come from urban areas including Caracas and neighboring states, although we expect the proportion of rural users to increase in 2024 via a new local partnership. In the US, we have reached app users in 44 states and chat users in 10 states. All chat users supported in the US thus far primarily speak Spanish and some may have irregular migration status.
While we limit the collection of personally identifiable information, we infer that Aya Contigo users belong to a variety of economic backgrounds, given that some referred users report they can pay for services without issue and others request financial support.
Averting maternal disability or death benefits all: the women, their children (both in improved life expectancy and educational attainment), and society in general, as women are important (albeit undervalued) contributors to the stability of any country’s economy. Therefore, we expect Aya Contigo to be cost-effective by providing women with an option to avoid potential disability or death from an unsafe abortion while increasing their self-determination. There is ample evidence to show that an abortion with pills is safe and effective. By scaling Aya we also want to empower women and girls to have a safe abortion experience and receive the necessary attention and support, ultimately allowing women and girls to exercise the full potential of their reproductive autonomy
No humanitarian crisis, regardless of the cause, is gender-neutral. They all disproportionately affect women and girls. The ongoing complex humanitarian emergency (CHE) in Venezuela has alarmingly increased gender gaps by placing the rights of women and girls in a grave situation of vulnerability. Since 2016, the “Equivalencias en Acción” coalition, composed of feminist and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) grassroots organizations in VE, have documented and provided evidence of grave violations of rights such as the right to a life free from violence; the right to health, including the right not to die from causes related to pregnancy and labor; and the right to reproductive autonomy. Aya directly addresses these rights violations for women and girls.
There is growing acceptance of digital interventions with evidence suggesting that clients prefer the practicality and confidentiality of technology-enabled interventions and guided online support, as opposed to in-person services. Aya and other digital interventions have been critical in supporting hard-to-reach, low-income pregnant individuals, particularly in areas with shortages in health and social services, humanitarian crisis settings, migrants, and clinical access restrictions due to COVID-19.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Our female-led multidisciplinary team of women’s health experts, medical professionals, SRH activists, and public health and technology specialists brings the diverse expertise and experiences needed to implement this project successfully. The core Vitala Team, Dr. Roopan, and Dr. Genevieve are OBGYNs with human-centered design research skills, field experiences in humanitarian/challenging settings, operational expertise, technical knowledge, and dedication to providing access to reproductive healthcare.
Genevieve and Roopan met and bonded over their shared passion for addressing health inequities impacting women and adolescent girls during their residency in Obstetrics & Gynecology in Ottawa 12 years ago. Vitala Global was inspired by their academic and clinical experiences working with women and girls living in challenging contexts, both in Canada and in humanitarian settings globally.
Roopan Gill is the Co-Founder, CEO and the Community, Research and Product Design Lead. She is an Ob/Gyn with expertise in family planning and abortion care. She holds a Masters in Public Health in Global Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Roopan has worked with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) as an emergency OBGYN. She has worked with the WHO providing technical expertise to its Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health Research, Preventing Unsafe Abortion Unit and was pivotal in including mifepristone on the core essential medicines list. She was named Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in 2022.
Genevieve Tam is the Co-Founder, Director of Projects, and Product and User Support Lead. She is an OB/GYN with extensive experience in global women's health from education, project management, and program implementation. She holds a master's degree in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She volunteers with the Canadian Network for International Surgery as an instructor and editor for their capacity-building training programs in low-resource settings. She was the Gynecology Team Leader for MSF in a maternal health project for Syrian refugees, migrant workers, and marginalized Lebanese in Lebanon.
Together they built a team of dedicated feminists and sexual reproductive health experts, all passionate about Vitala’s mission to empower women to achieve their reproductive health goals. The Aya Contigo Team consists of 23 Latinas based in Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and Dominican Republic. Together they make up the Care Team which provides virtual chat accompaniment and emotional support for users; the Community Engagement Team which conducts outreach to expand Aya’s trusted referral network and community mobilizing to advocate for sexual and reproductive health and rights; the Digital Marketing and Communications team; the Design and Impact team which consists of UX/UI designers, BD strategist, and Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist. In addition, Vitala has an in-house developer, a Finance and HR team that supports financial and accounting processes as well as business and sustainability planning, and a fundraising team including a grant writer and fundraising manager.
Vitala prides itself on having meaningful and impactful relationships with partners that can amplify impact and has worked closely with grassroots and community-led organizations across the geographies where they work.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Increase access to and quality of health services for medically underserved groups around the world (such as refugees and other displaced people, women and children, older adults, and LGBTQ+ individuals).Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
GrowthWhy are you applying to Solve?
We are applying to MIT Solve to support us in deepening our impact by expanding our reach to more women, girls, and gender-diverse people. To do this, we plan to allocate funding to building the capacity of our Aya Care Team, product development, and improve our quality of care.
This will include developing AI-powered capabilities (scaling language support and Care Team capacity, driving user engagement within the app, assisting with qualitative analysis of chat transcripts via natural language processing) and will fine-tune Aya Contigo’s chat support scalability to fast-track its roll-out across not just in Venezuela, but also in Guatemala and Colombia, in a cost-effective way. Consolidating our M&E system will complement this to define more strategic metrics for impact measurement that show more tangible, data-informed impact outcomes, and a holistic well-being strategy that can respond to a broader spectrum of SRH needs. We will also broaden self-managed care support to include contraception, menstrual cycle tracking, and miscarriage care solutions.
With Solve’s monetary and in-kind support, we will further the creation of equitable SRH solutions for Venezuelans, Venezuelan migrants in border communities in Colombia, and Guatemala’s in urban communities in Guatemala. Success in Guatemala, where abortion is heavily restricted, will indicate potential for roll out across the region, where abortion rights are routinely threatened. Solve’s partnership will assist us in continuing to empower our teams and build our community networks to demonstrate that digital solutions such as Aya Contigo are a benefit in contributing to and connecting the community-based feminist ecosystems that already exist in restrictive settings to the formal healthcare system to build their local capacity providing SRH care.
We have identified the following areas for in-kind / consultation support to better develop our product market strategy and expansion strategy:
Senior Software Engineering: advice on new technologies, for example, AI and machine learning and assist us to integrate different technologies (Whatsapp Chatbot, live chat/counseling features, peer-to-peer network) onto one platform.
Marketing Analysis: assist in guiding us on how best to position our products in the existing market, how to be less donor-dependent and build a social enterprise model.
Online Advertising Strategy: assistance on how best to develop a communications strategy for the dissemination of Aya Contigo and help us better articulate to a diverse audience the synergy between our products and our process as Vitala Global.
Business Development and Advisory Support: advice on financial modeling and a business model to develop a revenue-generating arm of Aya Contigo
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Dr. Roopan Gill
What makes your solution innovative?
Aya Contigo is a platform that is bridging the gaps between the formal health system and community care models by embedding our tools within healthcare systems to create a continuum of support and services. We are utilizing, leveraging and retooling technology to provide access and support for pregnant individuals for self-managed care in humanitarian crisis countries. The apps and digital tools currently available provide one-dimensional care in the form of resources. We are the only platform that accompanies women through a safe medication abortion and family planning journey, providing evidence-based, reliable private digital resources to avoid unsafe abortions with one-on-one chat support through a virtual chat and SMS notifications in Venezuela, which we also aim to roll out in Colombia.
Aya Contigo is unique because it is one of the first examples of a digital self-care tool that has been co-created with women, girls, and their community to address a stigmatized sexual and reproductive health issue in a complex humanitarian crisis. Using a human-centered design research methodology, building a robust theory of change, monitoring and evaluation plan and developing and implementing safeguarding and cybersecurity policies, Aya Contigo is demonstrating it is possible to develop quality digital solutions that can empower women and girls.
Aya is accessible as a web app to be used on a web browser or downloaded on a mobile phone or tablet through the Android Play Store and Apple iOS store. Once downloaded, it can be used completely offline - this was an important design and development decision based on concerns from the users and stakeholders regarding the unreliable internet connectivity.
Human-centered design research identified that women wanted the option of having reminders to support them through the abortion process (e.g. pill reminders, emotional support prompts). WhatsApp was found to be the most widely used form of communication, more so than methods such as SMS or email, therefore opt-in check-in reminders from Aya come through WhatsApp, which will then redirect users to the app for evidence-based and safe resources or referrals.
Aya can change women’s access to sexual and reproductive health support in humanitarian crises as well as in rural and isolated settings. Through our beta rollout, it has successfully demonstrated a virtual accompaniment model as a safe, acceptable and feasible harm reduction tool in the safe abortion ecosystem to support women’s quality of care through a safe self-managed abortion with pills. It could reduce indirect costs and resources associated with traditional over-the-phone or in-person accompaniment models, empower women to manage their journey, and provide a scalable approach to increasing access to accurate information. Its interactive components use WhatsApp notifications to support the quality of care.
Aya as a digital platform has been designed for scalable replication to be deployed to all vulnerable Venezuelans, including those living in rural and indigenous communities and the millions of Venezuelan refugees/migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Of note, the World Health Organization endorsed Aya Contigo as one of the top 5 innovative solutions for abortion care.
Describe in simple terms how and why you expect your solution to have an impact on the problem.
Vitala Global has conducted primary research with Venezuelan people, SRH organizations and activists to understand the crisis, services, experiences and barriers that pregnant individuals are experiencing. Vitala Global’s interventions and this theory of change are rooted in human-centered research, global health organizations' recommendations and guidelines as well as the team's clinical and medical expertise to create the desired change.
Impact Enabling conditions to experience reproductive autonomy: women and girls have a greater ability to exercise control over their reproductive lives as empowered agents in their needs and decisions.
Long-term outcome
Effectiveness: Highly effective digital support system for self-managed medication abortion: Aya Contigo provides quality and accurate information and care digitally that enables the user to feel prepared and supported through their self-managed abortion and/or post-abortion contraception journey.
Short-term / Medium-term Outcomes
Quality: Improved ‘quality’ abortion care: Aya Contigo delivers a *women-centered, integrated approach to comprehensive abortion care where the merging of self-managed care, clinical care and community is centered in empathy, support, expertise, and safeguarding human rights.
Efficacy: Strengthened and empowered abortion community: Community of partner organizations, activists, feminists are committed to support women in their SMA journey and safe abortion advocacy
Access: Improved self-managed abortion experience: Women are able to self manage a medication abortion through Aya Contigo and access a reliable referral network that supports their abortion and contraception needs (utilization, satisfaction, confidence).
Outputs:
Quality:
Aya Contigo team has the technical competence necessary for delivering quality abortion care from the point of screening to guiding in medication abortion and providing aftercare
Strong comprehensive communications and referral systems are in place alongside technologies and staff for access to high-quality abortion care
Efficacy:
Increased capacity of local organizations to support women to access medication abortion via Aya platform
Created a safe space to facilitate technical exchange/dialogue within the abortion community
Access:
Increased knowledge of and access to Aya Contigo mobile platform
Context: Vitala conducted a human-centered research study in 2020, with over 1000 Venezuelan women, 12 grassroots organizations and sexual and reproductive health activists. It identified the need for reliable contextualized digital safe abortion and contraception information to help prevent unsafe abortions and unplanned pregnancies. There is growing acceptance of digital interventions with evidence suggesting that clients prefer the practicality and confidentiality of technology-enabled interventions and guided online support, as opposed to in-person services. Evidence and guidelines from The WHO have proven that women can self-manage their own abortions with pills safely and meet their unmet contraceptive needs if they are provided with the right information and access to referral mechanisms as well as decentralizing and optimizing the use of healthcare resources. Many interventions in medical abortion care, particularly those in early pregnancy, can now be provided at the primary-care level and on an outpatient basis, which further increases access to care. Medical abortion care reduces the need for skilled surgical abortion providers and offers a non-invasive and highly acceptable option to pregnant individuals. Furthermore, self-assessment and self-management approaches can be empowering for individuals.
What are your impact goals for your solution and how are you measuring your progress towards them?
In the next 12 months, our impact goals will focus on strengthening existing activities to scale Aya Contigo within Venezuela, Colombia, and Guatemala to adapt and co-create Aya Contigo to these new contexts. We aim to:
Launch Aya Contigo in Colombia, specifically to Venezuelan migrants and refugees at the border, as well as other vulnerable groups living in Colombia. This will be done through our partnership with local feminist partners.
Launch Aya Contigo in urban communities in Guatemala alongside our partner, Asociación Manos Abiertas
Expand emotional self-care section in-app and chat support
Co-create new content/features for app/chat including consideration of AI integration to the chat
Establish a referral network of clinicians, psychologists, legal support for migrants
Community engagement and movement-building workshops with an emphasis on exploring values around abortion
In 2 to 5 years, as we continue to scale in Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, and restrictive states in the United States, we will aim to launch Aya Contigo in similar contexts. This includes those with restrictive laws and/or humanitarian crisis, as well as other countries where the influx of migrants and refugees is high. Stakeholder mapping of potential partners in Latin America has begun with the intention to move in parallel as we work on scaling current efforts. We aim to partner with international and local organizations and by utilizing our human-centered design process and support partners to adapt and implement Aya Contigo to their respective contexts.
We have developed a robust Monitoring & Evaluation Framework based on our Theory of Change. The framework divides our indicators across 5 objectives: Impact, Access, Effectiveness, Quality, Efficacy. We also have specific KPI metrics for the app using Google Analytics. The indicators to measure impact are gathered from quantitative surveys that include NPS scores, qualitative data gathered from interacting with users over the virtual chat support and web and mobile data analytics to explore usage patterns. Examples of the KPI's we track in Venezuela are:
# of Venezuelan women and girls who successfully self-manage their abortions using Aya Contigo ( this includes: self-assessing for eligibility, self-administering and self-assessing for completion)
# of Venezuelan women and girls who access their contraceptive method of choice due to recommendations by Aya Contigo
- ###p#< of users claim to be able to make their own informed decisions regarding MA after using our referral network and mobile application.
# of Venezuelan women and girls who feel positively about their abortion experience and received the care they were seeking
- ###p#< of users who felt prepared for what to do if they experienced warning signs or in the event of complications
- ###p#< of users who felt reassured of their privacy and safety throughout their abortion process/procedure
# of Aya Contigo users who successfully obtain medication abortion pills
- ###p#< increase in referrals to Aya Contigo after formal establishment of partnerships
# of users who keep using Aya Contigo 7, 14, and 30 days after 1st launch
Similar KPIs are being designed for Colombia and Guatemala.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
When our founders were working in challenging, humanitarian settings, they thought about the power of digital for greater access to SRH and abortion care in the most challenging and restrictive settings. We learned that in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) 54% of the female population uses mobile internet (GSMA, 2020). Similarly, in some countries, up to 67% of the population regularly uses the Internet, and this figure is higher, almost 86%, among users under 30 (USC Annenberg, 2019). For this reason, Aya Contigo is a progressive web app that can be used in web browsers and also can be downloaded as an offline app on any operating system, and can also be downloaded from the Google Play Store in Venezuela. A progressive web app was the solution for us to be able to quickly iterate content and features in response to user feedback using an agile content management system (Contentful), without the user having to wait for updates to be published. We have WhatsApp API integration (Twilio) for chat support and pill reminder notifications, and an embedded chat platform (Crisp) within the app for real-time accompaniment while using the app. We are exploring automation, ethical artificial intelligence, smart filters, and peer-to-peer matching/community building are all areas we would like to explore to provide further support to Aya users. Anonymous and passive data collection on users' use of the app will assist us in geomapping and better understanding where the users are coming from and where we need to target our outreach.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technology
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:
https://www.vitalaglobal.org/aya ; www.instagram.com/ayacontigoapp
In which countries do you currently operate?
Which, if any, additional countries will you be operating in within the next year?
How many people work on your solution team?
We have a fully remote team because we are committed to the localization of our work to ensure our work is impactful. Two thirds of the team are female Latinas and based in the global south.
4 full-time team members
26 part-time team members
4 variable contractors
How long have you been working on your solution?
Our team has been working on Aya Contigo for 4.5 years. We piloted Aya Contigo in April 2021 and officially launched in Venezuela on March 10, 2022 via web URL and on the Google Play Store.
Tell us about how you ensure that your team is diverse, minimizes barriers to opportunity for staff, and provides a welcoming and inclusive environment for all team members.
Equity consideration is at the forefront of our organization. We are a female-led organization that works to ensure that those who are the most marginalized work with us and are represented in our digital solutions. We engage people representing the communities with whom we are implementing Aya to ensure that lived experience in the context of each location is represented.
Examples of this include:
We have 18 local Venezuelan staff.
Our team leads for the community engagement team and care teams are Venezuelan migrants.
Our software developers are queer-led female-led and focus on training people who have been victims of gender-based violence.
Our youth advisory board is made up of 4 Venezuelans, including a trans person, to ensure youth voices are represented in our research, outreach, product, and implementation.
We foster equity through open dialogue, transparent processes, and a fair distribution of resources. Inclusion is an outcome of diversity and equity strategies created in this initiative through ongoing participation and cultivating full and meaningful engagement of stakeholders at every level.
Vitala has built a team that is reflective of the global community, and specifically the communities Aya Contigo serves. This brings understanding, perspective, and accountability to the work. The team consists of 35 people from more than 10 countries; 96% are female, 75% are BIPOC, Latina/x and 50% are under 30.
We are supported by a diverse board of directors/advisors that provides expert guidance in areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights, women’s health research, law, business development, and digital health.
What is your business model?
Vitala Global scales and impacts in two ways: through its product and its process.
Product:
We will offer Aya for free for the most marginalized (refugees/ migrants/ underserved communities) and those living in challenging contexts. We are exploring B2B in partnership with large NGOs, iNGOS, private partners to license or subscribe to the app and use Aya Contigo on a wide scale for their beneficiaries. We are also government partnerships in contexts in LATAM that are less restrictive (for example Colombia).
Key customers: large NGOs, iNGOS, multilateral organizations, private partners, government
Key activities: license/subscription model whereby partners subsidize the of Aya
Key revenue: yearly license/subscription fee
Key expense: staff costs
2. Process:
We integrate our public health knowledge and humanitarian experience into our research and design approach to enable human-centered innovations that are relevant and meaningful to individuals and communities that seek digital solutions for self-managed abortion and contraception care. This model not only enables Vitala to scale its human-centered design process in SRHR solutions across NGO partners that support similar causes as Vitala, it also subsidizes Aya user fees in Venezuela at 18-20% margin per project.
Key customers: organizations (e.g. NGO partners) that support similar causes as Vitala
Key activities: We consult organizations that are developing digital tools and solutions to SRHR issues using our expertise from developing Aya Contigo
Key revenue: consultancy fee
Key expenses: staff costs
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable, and what evidence can you provide that this plan has been successful so far?
Goals:
Within the next 12 months: operational sustainability; i.e. activities are accurately costed and funds cover 25 - 50% of costs
2025 and beyond: financial sustainability i.e. effective and consistent cost management to continuously build up surpluses to reinvest back into the organization
Financial strategies in the pipeline:
Immediate to short-term (2024)
Continue grant applications (grant writer hired, seek consortium formation opportunities, establish network)
Subscription pricing model for partners in the United States has started for partners to pay and refer Spanish speakers to Aya Contigo whom we support
Develop a financial model for a license to Aya Contigo in the United States to partners like Planned Parenthood Federation of America to license Aya Contigo to them, this work focuses on Latina/x and BIPOC communities in areas most affected by the overturning of Roe v. Wade
Medium-term (2025-2026)
Build a strong impact and business case for Aya Contigo, integrating the scalability case and impact measurement framework into the fundraising narrative to make our pitch clearer, stronger, and more appealing, backed by a solid financial model and pricing calculation.
Seek consultancy projects with INGOs with bigger budgets to increase margins
Establish commercial partnership models developing solutions for for-profit and nonprofit organizations to offer our digital self-care solution in SRH as a service (outsourcing service model, product licensing model, consultancy model, training/workshop model).
Long-term (2026 and beyond)
National scale of Aya Contigo in the United States
Scale to less restrictive countries in Latin America, such as Colombia and Mexico, with a revenue generation model, while maintaining a free model for vulnerable populations
To date, Vitala Global has raised 1.3 million USD. Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) is one of our primary funders. They funded our initial OPTions grant that first provided the foundation for our work. We have since received additional GCC funding under the Transition to Scale Phase 1 category, which has enabled us to scale our work to Venezuelan youth and through Transition to Scale Phase 2 category to expand to rural Venezuela, Guatemala and to build out our revenue generation model. Funding th
In 2022, we were also awarded a grant from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which enabled us to launch Aya Contigo within the United States market.
We have also received funding from philanthropists and anonymous donors with a total of $426 000 USD between 2021 - 2023.
Solution Team
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Our Organization
Vitala Global Foundation