Alcatel-Lucent Foundation provides two-year funding grant to support training of young women for Pesinet’s child healthcare monitoring program in Mali

The Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Alcatel-Lucent, has provided a two-year US$60,000 grant to support the development of Pesinet’s child healthcare monitoring program in Mali.

Pesinet relies on young women hired and trained to visit families to check on the health of young children and their families in their communities. Their duties include weighing infants to monitor their growth and ensure they are getting the nutrition they need to become healthy children as well as performing regular health check-ups for children under 5 years old in low-income communities.

The Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, which emphasizes support for education and training programs, in particular for girls and young women from disadvantaged areas, provides funding to support the development of the training program for the Pesinet health workers as well as the creation of new jobs for young women in the zones covered by the service.

“I would like to thank Alcatel-Lucent and the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation for their trust and support for the development of our program,” said Anne Roos-Weil, co founder and CEO of Pesinet. “This grant from the Foundation will enable us to implement an ambitious program to increase the impact of our field projects to ensure the health of more children in Mali. I am also excited that in addition to the financial support provided by the Foundation, Alcatel-Lucent employees in Senegal are volunteering to be involved in the professional mentoring of our program coordinator based in Mali, giving us some new perspectives on how we might better achieve our goals.”
Job opportunities for young people, and especially young women, are limited in Mali and they suffer from high rates of unemployment and underemployment. In addition to a stable and formal job, those hired by the Pesinet program are provided training in health skills by the doctor of the local partnering healthcare center and can develop marketing skills as ambassadors of the service among families. They play a key role in educating and raising awareness of disease prevention and the importance of medical care for young children and are recognized in their communities for their know-how.

“We are proud to support a project that will help improve the health of young children in Mali and create economic opportunities for young women by helping them develop new skills and empowering them as knowledgeable professionals in their communities and health ambassador for children,” said Béatrice Tassot, Executive Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation.”

About Pesinet

Pesinet is a not-for-profit international organization delivering a simple prevention and early-care system for countries lacking medical resources with the objective of driving a systemic change in the healthcare situation of low-income countries and reducing child mortality. Pesinet was designed to offset the weaknesses of existing public healthcare systems and provide affordable healthcare services to help prevent, detect and treat diseases in time thanks to the periodic and cost-efficient monitoring of key health data. Our mission is to avoid complications of benign diseases that still account for more than 50% of child mortality causes in Africa. Pesinet uses mobile technologies and the proximity work of health agents from the communities served to reach families where they live and work and drive demand for early-treatment. For more information, visit: http://www.pesinet.org/

About the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation

The Alcatel-Lucent Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Alcatel-Lucent and it leads the company's charitable activities. With a focus on education and volunteerism, the Foundation's mission is to support the commitment of Alcatel-Lucent to social responsibility by serving and enhancing the communities where its employees and customers live and work. To accomplish its mission, the Foundation manages grants, corporate contributions and employee volunteerism on a global level. It is defined as a "charitable", non-governmental, non-profit, private organization that receives its income from the corporation — Alcatel-Lucent — whose name it bears. However, legally it is an independent entity and is governed by its own board of trustees that is separate from the corporate board of directors. For more information, visit: http://www2.alcatel-lucent.com/foundation/