Many reputed Universities and Institutions are engaging with ZMQ and sending their students to study MIRA channel as an ideal technology platform for changing the lives of the students. Some of the institutions and students who have worked on MIRA are:
Yale School of Management, New Haven, USA
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
In 2013-2014, ZMQ won the Yale Global Social Entrepreneurship fellowship and engaged with bright students of the MBA course at the Yale School of Management to develop ‘MIRA’s Future Financial Sustainability Model’. The team visited India worked with the ZMQ and MIRA teams on the ground, conducted relevant research, studied various business models, interviewed over 200 different stake-holders, conducted more than 10 focus group discussions and engaged with various partners of MIRA. Based on the research, a report was submitted with a set of recommendations (operational, financial or otherwise) to meet the challenge to create sustainable financial model of MIRA. ZMQ is currently working on the recommendations and setting up a sustainable business model around MIRA. Some of the salient features of the report are as follows.
ZMQ believes that health information and services for women are the core of MIRA whose objective to provide timely access to health information and services to improve maternal and child health. We call this as the ‘heart of MIRA’. This is non-negotiable and has to be provided free of cost to all the women around the world. These are the Communication Channel and Service Delivery Connectivity.
MIRA Channel provides lot of ancillary information and services to women for their other needs which extends beyond health. This can be Value Added Tools (VAS) like skills development, vocational training, entrepreneurship, market connections, social games and edutainment. We will be soon launching a social model where these VAS and trainings will be either used by communities on a Fee basis or will be sponsored by corporates and organizations to pay for the communities.