Bringing New Life Safely Into the World

“We exist as a commitment to save lives and change lives one product at a time, making one happy woman at a time.”  – Zubaida Bai

We are proud to send our congratulations to Zubaida Bai, Founder and CEO of AYZH, for being recognized as a 2012 Echoing Green fellow. Fewer than one percent of applicants are typically accepted to Echoing Green’s extremely competitive fellowship program, which provides more than $2 million in seed funding to some of the world’s most promising social entrepreneurs. For Zubaida, this fellowship recognizes her profound commitment to the lives and livelihood of women, and mothers in particular, across the globe. Providing affordable health care products specifically suited for women in the developing world is not enough for Zubaiad and her team at AYZH: these products are also beautifully designed.  For example, the JANMA clean birth kit, pictured above, not only contains everything necessary for a woman anywhere in the world to give birth, but also arrives in a purse that keeps the kit concealed and can act as a fashionable accessory. Zubaida’s repeated recognition: a 2009 TED India Fellow, a 2010-2011 Ashoka Maternal Health fellow, and a 2012 Echoing Green Fellow, speaks both to her brilliance and to the magnitude of the problem she is meeting head on. Every other second a mother dies in child birth for lack of safe birth supplies, but Zubaida and the team at AYZH are boldly telling the world that this need not be the case. From communities in Malawi to the United States, mothers using the JANMA birth kit are able to safely bring new life into the world.