Due Diligence on the Ground

Schaffer & Combs personnel spend a lot of time at project sites. The trips are intense, because time is by definition short and the stakes are always high. For several days last summer, Arthur Combs
traveled through Kenya representing an S&C client, an innovative private philanthropy, and staying busy to say the least.

Our ultimate aim on this particular project is to, while supplanting the traditional and sometimes harmful grantor-grantee model, manage several investments to measurable humanitarian gains in the health care delivery context of rural East Africa. And, as always, this is impossible without deep relationships with capable, diligent, and experienced local partners.

The highlights of what Arthur worked on in rural Kenya during a very packed three weeks:

-An investment to fund the salary and benefits for one of the only physicians in a district with 800,000 residents.

-Long-term funding for the operations of two outpatient clinics, annually serving 30,000 patients in a community with an HIV positive rate of higher than 20%.

-Launching a first-of-its-kind, full spectrum disabilities rehabilitation services and equipment program, delivering fitted wheelchairs and therapy to hundreds of people currently living without any accommodation of their disabilities.

-Measuring the early stage metrics of a bicycle pilot program for rural Community Health Workers aimed at more than doubling the number of daily home visits.

-Instituting a basic health insurance program for the students of a rural school for orphaned girls and young women.

-Monitoring the progress of a team of American surgeons whose goal is to perform 80 life-saving / altering surgeries in nine days in a rural district hospital.