Engage and empower the whole of Bangladeshi society to co-create novel solutions to development challenges and boost their chances of making an or impact at scale.

E-specialized services for people with disabilities

Rahim, a 14-year-old blooming child suffered from a fatal accident at an earlier age. His left side of the body has been paralyzed. “When I woke up, everything was the same except my body.” Rahim broke into tears. “I lost control over my body and all my dreams were shattered within moments” he added. Rahim belongs to a middle-class family who lives in a remote area of Mymensingh. Both of my parents work at the primary school and it is very difficult for them to take care of Rahim physically and financially. “It is very difficult to carry me to the CRP center twice a month. I seem to trouble my parents a lot but they never express.” A digital patient follow-up system will make it easier for people like Rahim to seek quality services complying with core values of equality, justice and cost-efficiency. A2I initiative of the Service Innovation Fund (SIF) has made it possible for an automated patient follow-up system to be launched, named “Community Digital Information and Service Booth” under Upazilla Disabled People Development Council (UDPDC). This initiative is capable of providing upgraded healthcare support for physically challenged people in remote and out-of-reach places through neat integration of easily available technology (telemedicine, video conferencing, regular follow-up through mobile, etc).

Living in a competitive world is getting more and more difficult with time. If things aren’t easy for healthy beings then it is beyond imagination how unfavorable the fast pacing world must be for people with disabilities. Every task is challenging for them. They need as many user-friendly support systems as possible. Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed (CRP) has been persistently trying to provide the patients with more accessible advanced facilities but the patient follow-up procedures applicable to individuals with disabilities have been very slow and expensive till now. The project “E-specialized services for people with disabilities” has been initiated to provide an advanced digital patient follow-up system for those underprivileged people.

Within 6 months of operation, the project developed 08 Upazila level CDISB under Upazilla Disabled People Development Councils (UDPDC) with advanced specialized services. This project has been developed for the purpose of social and economic of disable people in the rural areas of Bangladesh, as well as access to information with Community Digital Information and Service Booth (CDISB). All the beneficiaries of the project are physically impaired and socially discriminated. This project will be helpful to ensure access to information from various services providing organization, employment and income generation, training, capacity & skill development for the people with disabilities and it will ensure their development in a sustainable manner.

Innovators are faced with significant challenges

A tech-based startup wanted to design a technology that allowed students to access multimedia content in communities still off the electricity grid. A local non-profit social development organization, working with disability rights, wanted to convert national curriculum textbooks available in Bangla into accessible education content for visually impaired children and slow learners. A government entity wanted to automate the system for applying for and receiving environment clearance certificates. And a local innovator with his team wanted to develop their own version of 3D printers that could manufacture artificial limbs and any small-scale prototype at much less time and cost than their foreign counterparts.

These innovative ideas faced a few common obstacles –

1. The innovators did not have the funds to develop complete prototypes

2. They could not test the efficacy of the prototypes with real users or beneficiaries.

Service Innovation Fund as a solution to these challenges

a2i’s Service Innovation Fund (SIF) was designed to address these challenges. It provides seed funds and incubates cost-effective, user-centric, home-grown innovations to solve some of the most important problems affecting underserved communities.

SIF also sets itself apart from other ‘innovation funds’ by:

• Co-investing with the innovators in bringing their ideas to life

• Providing mentorship support and access to citizen-beneficiaries to refine the prototypes and make them more user-centric

• Supporting innovators through liaising with relevant partners from both the public and private sectors for effective project implementation, successful scale-up and sustainability

To date, SIF has attracted 3,835+ innovative proposals, using an online platform called Idea Bank and granted over a quarter-million dollars to government agencies, development organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academic institutions, private companies and even individuals.

Whole-of-society doing development innovation

As a result, Bangladesh now has solar-powered multimedia classrooms being set up in all off-grid locations; DAISY standard multimedia talking books for use by visually impaired students and slow learners covering education content for classes 1 through 8; an online application system for Environment Clearance Certificate; and a 3D printer which has already been used to print artificial limbs for disabled children whose parents are too poor to afford conventional prosthetics.