CommCare Connect: A Year In Review

Empowering Frontline Workers: Unveiling the Achievements and Milestones of CommCare Connect in 2023

After a busy 2023, our team at DImagi is thrilled to share an update about one of our biggest initiatives, CommCare Connect. Built on top of CommCare, CommCare Connect is an innovative platform that allows Frontline Workers and organizations to opt into paid and purposeful work. 

In this post, we share some reflections and initial learnings from the initial design and testing of the platform in 2023. You can read more about these learnings in greater detail in this linked presentation.

What is CommCare Connect?

Dimagi’s new CommCare Connect initiative offers the first digital tool that enables Frontline Workers to autonomously learn, deliver, and be paid for verified services.

• Learn: Users select and receive training through a digital training platform.
• Deliver: Users deliver additional services via their active jobs, leveraging CommCare.
• Verify: Service delivery is verified – leveraging biometrics, GPS, and data algorithms.
• Pay: Users can see what compensation they are owed, and be paid digitally or manually.

The platform will provide growth opportunities for Frontline Workers and more efficient expansion of frontline services. CommCare offers the perfect (and only) vehicle to reach hundreds of thousands of Frontline Workers. CommCare Connect will leverage these 150k+ and growing user base.

2023: Results Across A Range of Interventions

The CommCare Connect initiative launched towards the tail end of 2022, when Dimagi established a CommCare Connect team, leveraging a $25 million investment by the Steele Foundation for Hope. 

Dimagi and its partners have used the CommCare Connect platform to deliver a wide range of interventions. The platform has successfully facilitated Child Health Campaigns (Vitamin A and Deworming), conducted Household Safety Checks, supported Early Childhood Development programs, provided Group Therapy for Depression, and vaccine promotion.

We’re thrilled to share that CommCare Connect has already made a big impact. Through partnerships with 12 incredible organizations, we have reached over 77,000 clients in 7 countries, including Kenya, India, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, and Malawi. We’ve also been able to distribute a total of $161,000 in direct payments to Frontline Workers and organizations for these services.

We’re encouraged by the progress made so far, and the opportunities to expand into additional intervention areas, with new partners in existing and new countries.

I must say the [Community Health Workers] are extremely excited about the app….we are getting more positive responses from the team in general.

Nama Wellness Centre, Uganda
Mental Health Campaign

Frontline Worker Autonomy and Empowerment

One of the most exciting findings from our pilots is that Frontline Workers have independently engaged in the entire CommCare Connect Learn, Deliver, Verify, Pay cycle. This year, Dimagi rolled out the platform to FLWs in Malawi, enabling them to self-sign up for CommCare Connect projects from their pre-existing CommCare accounts.

From there, these Frontline Workers demonstrated the ability to learn new skills, deliver verified essential services, and get paid fairly for their work, all through the platform. This level of autonomy and ability to deliver essential services quickly is proving out our hypothesis that there is an opportunity to unlock an ecosystem to deliver even greater impact and value for Frontline Workers and locally led organizations. We believe this is truly game changing.

We are seeing a high demand from community members who were not targeted requesting the volunteer to visit their households.

Everlisto Phiri,
M&E Lead, Pachi, Malawi

Looking Ahead to 2024

While we have been able to validate some key questions and assumptions, there is still much that we need to continue to explore. This includes pursuing additional pilots in a range of essential service delivery areas, such as Kangaroo Mother Care and Vaccine promotion, as well as rolling out new Group Therapy pilots to 2,500 individuals in Tigray, Ethiopia with World Vision. We look forward to continuing to explore new questions from our CommCare Connect learning journey, and sharing results with the wider community. 

In addition to these essential service delivery areas, we will also be prioritizing the scale-up of Child Health Campaign Services. We are currently seeking partners to support the next 1 million verified child visits of child health campaigns, and build the evidence base and infrastructure needed to scale to 10+ million visits per year. Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in joining us on this journey!

To see a detailed overview of our 2023 learnings from CommCare Connect, please check out this presentation. Please contact Mercy Simiyu, Director of Frontline Programs at Dimagi, at msimiyu@dimagi.com with questions, comments, and follow up.