MiracleFeet’s partnership with INSEAD started in 2021 when MBA students gathered for the 10^th Master Strategy Day—a competition to create a strategy for MiracleFeet to expand clubfoot treatment in middle-income countries. Since then, the partnership has continued through a follow-on field-based course in INSEAD’s MBA program called Business as a Force for Good Practicum, or BFG. This year, the BFG course culminated in a trip to The Gambia. This account is by participating students Smridhi Khanna and Prasad Nallusamy.

Pursuing an MBA from INSEAD, the business school of the world, means studying with students of 65+ nationalities, spending hours brainstorming solutions to difficult problems, and exploring the world together. However, of all the experiences we had in the last ten months, traveling to The Gambia, the smallest country in Africa that many of us knew very little about, to work with MiracleFeet clearly stood out.

When we traveled to The Gambia in October, along with 22 of our MBA classmates, we were tasked with creating pragmatic solutions for six of MiracleFeet’s African partners to help further their work with hospitals, government agencies, and other local partners to deliver clubfoot treatment to families searching for care. Accounting for the level of support MiracleFeet provides and the unique challenges facing each partner, we divided into six groups, each assigned a specific country to research and help create solutions to overcome the challenges of the countries (The Gambia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Morocco, and Sudan). Challenges included: increasing patient access to clubfoot treatment, increasing awareness of the condition in rural and semi-urban areas, ensuring adequate number of trained providers, and building partnerships with local organizations and governments to unlock funding and increase systematic support for clubfoot treatment.

Our experience can be divided into three phases:

1. Preparation (before the visit)

The project’s first phase included a presentation by MiracleFeet providing a broad overview of clubfoot, MiracleFeet’s operating model in each of the six countries, and the overall challenges. We were then put in touch with MiracleFeet’s local partners to learn more about the country-specific challenges. Using the financial reports provided and conversations with partners, most of the groups initially identified opening new clinics and unlocking funding support from government and local NGOs as the key tasks.

2. On-ground experience (during the visit)

With our ideas in mind and excitement to solve these challenges building, we embarked on a five-day trip to The Gambia. The first two days were dedicated to visiting clubfoot clinics and spending time with patients and families in their homes to gather as much on-ground data about clubfoot treatment and parents’ experiences with it as possible. We saw clubfoot clinics that utilized the government hospital rooms and had very basic equipment—sometimes only a fan and a table. Some parents had to be contacted multiple times to encourage them to bring their children in for treatment.

Visiting patients at their homes and hearing from them first-hand was eye-opening for us; it revealed how people live in very humble settings with large families and limited access to education, jobs, and income. Some families had six children, all of whom relied on one working member of the household for food and other expenses. Travelling for a weekly clubfoot treatment appointment often meant utilizing multiple modes of transportation to reach the clinic–many kilometers and many hours away. It also meant forgoing a day’s wages and spending already limited resources on transportation.  

While visiting the families, we also saw how social stigma hindered them from visiting treatment centers (opting instead for local healers) thereby urging us to design solutions to address these specific challenges.

3. Co-creating solutions with local partners (during the visit)

Following the clinic and family visits, we teamed up with the local partners to develop solutions that would add value to their operations. We applied design-thinking principles to reframe our initial questions and be more patient-centric. For instance, from our initial problem statement of examining how we could increase enrollments in the clinics, we pivoted to exploring ideas for how to improve the patient’s journey from remote areas and complete treatment. Unlike before the trip where we anticipated the lack of funding and government support as the main bottlenecks, our solutions focused instead on making treatment more accessible to families through mobile vans, building basic dorms around clinics to assuage the travel burden on families, and spreading awareness of clubfoot treatment through local stakeholders and decision makers such as partnerships with spiritual healers, church communities, schools, and vaccination centers.

A key part of our program was the partnership with local MiracleFeet partners who not only collaborated on solutions with us, but also went a step further discussing implementation timelines, how to tackle key on-ground challenges, and how to measure the success of our recommendations. Their knowledge and experience working in a local context helped us re-think some recommendations and helped us learn our biggest lesson: even a well thought through strategy will fail if the social realities and local contexts do not support it.

Our experience in The Gambia was intriguing, insightful, and humbling. It made us even more passionate about using our time, education, and skills to support causes close to our hearts.

We are hopeful that our collaborations will continue and grow, and that our contributions to helping increase access to clubfoot will help ensure more children receive the care they deserve.

Prasad Nallusamy is a Chartered Accountant with six years of experience working with private-sector and public-sector organizations across various industries before pursuing his MBA at INSEAD. He has a keen interest in helping clients enhance financial management processes, operational transparency, and sustainability. Beyond his professional commitments, Prasad is passionate about promoting equitable access within communities and was elated to participate in this initiative.   

Smridhi Khanna is currently pursuing her MBA at INSEAD, bringing with her over seven years of experience in advisory and consulting across diverse sectors such as climate change, smart cities, technology, and retail. In her previous role, she led the strategy team of an impact-focused consulting firm, overseeing the digital transformation and integration of 30 million small businesses into India’s formal banking sector. Smridhi is fascinated by the evolving landscape of consulting, especially the emerging need to harmonize sustainable development with business goals and is enthusiastic about contributing to this transition. 

Note: INSEAD and MiracleFeet are grateful to Aaro Eide (MBA’91J and MiracleFeet’s board chair) and Georg Madersbacher (MBA’90D) for their generous support.