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Home / Projects / Strategy & Business Models / Feasibility of a Plan for Chronic Patients to Generate Income
0000s_0051_2011-SHIP-at-plantation

Feasibility of a Plan for Chronic Patients to Generate Income


Through an innovative collaboration, the Sustainable Household Income Project (SHIP) drew on Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard University, among others, to provide support to low-income patients affiliated with the Family Treatment Fund and Immune Suppression Syndrome Clinic in the rural environs of Mbarara, Uganda. SHIP aimed to help patients adhere to treatment and stay healthy by providing practical training in small business entrepreneurship and startup materials to launch household businesses.


Building on past projects, in 2011 SHIP asked a third student team to develop a business plan for expanding its lemongrass distillery by recruiting external lemongrass growers. The team constructed a variable-driven financial model incorporating unit cost and revenue information, leading to a set of strategic recommendations. Data were collected through interviews with donors, non-profit leadership, project managers, suppliers and local farmers. The students’ model quantified the effect of international markets on lemongrass sales, including new insights about risks, and informed a significant switch from production of lemongrass to other income generating activities. A year later, we learned that SHIP continued to use and revise the students’ analysis tools.

 

Related Content

Mbara Univeristy Sustainable Household Income Project

Family Treatment Fund

Discussion on GHD Online

Student Blog: MIT SHIP Project


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Project Details

Focus Area
  • Strategy & Business Models

Country
  • Uganda

Region
  • Mbarara

Partner
  • Sustainable Household Income Project

Health Specialization
  • HIV/AIDS

Enterprise Sector
  • Nonprofit

Enterprise Type
  • Education
  • Patient Support

Healthcare DVC
  • Prevention
  • Social

Session
  • 2011

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