Last night (16/5/13) while we slept in Zambia, there were celebrations going in Wilmington, Delaware, USA at the DuPont Packaging Innovation Awards. This morning we learnt that we’d won the top prize (Diamond) and we also won in the ‘Food Security’ category. It was great that our colleague, Rohit Ramchandani, was there and met up [...]
ColaLife featured in The Mail on Sunday – credit where credit is due
17 March 2013 by Leave a Comment
We are very pleased with this coverage in The Mail on Sunday about our nomination for Designs of the Year 2013 but I’d like to expand on it a bit. As the ‘front man’ for ColaLife I tend to get all the recognition which is not entirely fair! The idea of piggy-backing essential medicines on [...]
Top 10 achievements in 2012
30 December 2012 by 8 Comments
>> 2009′s top 10 >> 2010′s top 10 >> 2011′s top 10 The end of the line. A child using the Kit Yamoyo in a remote village in Kalomo. Image credit: Claire Ward. 1. The launch of COTZ (the ColaLife Operational Trial in Zambia) Remote rural Kit Yamoyo retailer It has taken 25 years from [...]
The first Kit Yamoyo sales numbers
1 December 2012 by 2 Comments
This week (29/11/12) we had our monthly implementation partners’ meeting, hosted by COTZ partner – Medical Stores Limited (MSL). My report to the meeting was a series of pictures using the syphon metaphor I’ve talk about previously which, incidentally, is proving to be a very accurate depiction in practice. This time yesterday, the whole flow [...]
AidPod gets triple nomination for packaging oscars!
4 September 2012 by 15 Comments
The finalists for this year’s UK Packaging Awards were announced yesterday (3/9/12) and ColaLife’s AidPod has been nominated in three categories: Innovation of the Year Best New Concept Award and CSR Initiative of the Year We didn’t actually put ourselves forward for the CSR Initiative of the Year because we are not really a CSR [...]
Demand-driven distribution chains – Step 1: Create a desirable product
3 September 2012 by 9 Comments
I have written before about supply-led versus demand-driven distribution systems. ColaLife is seeking to demonstrate that you can establish a demand-driven system which will pull a public health commodity into remote rural communities in Zambia. The tweet-sized version of this hypothesis goes like this: “You can get a product or service to anywhere in the [...]
The end of the packaging phase
31 July 2012 by Leave a Comment
This video makes the packaging process look all very simple but it’s involved months of work for our five packaging partners to get to this point and we are very grateful to them. Immediately after shooting this video I delivered the sealing machine, together with the last 6 boxes of AidPods, to our Kit Yamoyo assembly [...]
The ColaLife Innovation Map
24 June 2012 by 8 Comments
The image of AidPods in a Coca-Cola crate is such a strong one that many people think that is all there is to ColaLife, but there is a lot more innovation associated with ColaLife than that. The ColaLife innovation map below shows how the original idea has catalysed even more innovative thinking: Click on this [...]
Milestone: Test run to produce 4g/200ml ORS sachets a success
10 June 2012 by 5 Comments
Yesterday (10/6/12) was a momentous day for the ColaLife Trial in Zambia (COTZ). The first ever 4g sachets of ORS to be produced in Zambia came off a successfully modified machine at Pharmanova. At last, people looking after children in Zambia – in the trial areas initially - will have access to an ORS sachet designed specifically [...]
From AidPod to Anti-Diarrhoea Kit (ADK)
6 May 2012 by 11 Comments
Apologies for all the posts recently about packaging. It is a major focus at the moment but it’ll soon pass! I thought it would be useful to describe how the packaging and the components have now come together to form the anti-diarrhoea kit (ADK). Until the start of the set-up period of the trial we [...]
