Innovation Doesn’t Always Have to Be Zero to One - Eliza Li (Co-founder of Halad to Health)

Halad to Health is an international development organization closing the gap in global health inequality.

1.What led you to start Halad to Health?

4 years ago, I spent my first summer break from University volunteering as a medical aid student in Mindanao, Philippines, where I saw the true meaning of stewardship, generosity and real charity unfold right before my eyes for the first time. 

I followed medical teams traveling across the island to bring completely free, but life-changing, surgeries to some of the most far-flung indigent communities. I knew one day I’d follow in their footsteps, promised to come back to ‘do more’, and asked the local doctors what students, like me, possibly could do to help make a difference. 

Turns out… students could be just as important agents of change, too. The local doctor responded with, “Actually we should be the last line. the first line of aid should be providing the right health education early on”. 

And with that advice, here we are today and Halad to Health is doing just that. We are now a not-for-profit providing free health education to local schools and health facilities in the rural Philippines; which is completely funded from the proceeds from our Australian GAMSAT & Med Interview services. 

2.How do you know Halad to Health is making an impact in the Philippines?

I think there is no better metric of an impact than the real stories of the lives we’ve been able to touch. And I love sharing the story of a Grade 5 boy we taught on our first-ever health education classroom into primary schools in Bukidnon, Philippines. 

We only had the capacity to teach ~100 primary school students that day on the topics of dengue fever, personal and dental hygiene, so only a handful of student leaders were selected - this young boy was, fortunately, one of them. 

After the classes, he ran home to write our volunteers a thank you card for the lessons, and over the following weeks used the teaching materials we had left at their school to go on and continue teaching the rest of his grade on his own because the lessons we had provided were too important to be missed. 

And this isn’t the only story of students being empowered through health education. We have now taught over 4100+ students in the rural Philippines and after every health education lesson, we teach (for example, about emotional health and the rising rates of teen depression).

There never fails to be a message of gratitude in our inbox immediately after telling us this lesson was exactly what they needed and made their day.

3. You’ve been described as ‘The New Breed Of Entrepreneur’, what is different about your upcoming generation coming into the spotlight and your approach to entrepreneurship?

The difference for today’s generation really is an expected level of a social consciousness which was never considered the norm before. Today, every dollar IS a social dollar.

Social impact with substance behind it is almost a core ‘must’ and not an ‘add-on feel good’. And I believe what we are witnessing with our younger generation coming up is that the historical, incremental changes of ‘doing social good’ just don’t make the cut anymore.

We now know how to weed out the superficial, ‘doing the thing for good press’ fluff which puts pressure of organizations to be more transparent and invest in long-term sustainable goals with their social dollar. 

At Halad, we’re pretty much a team of Gen Z’s catering to Gen Z’s, so it wasn’t too hard for us to figure out how making a social impact, no matter how big or small that is during our early days, is not just part of our value proposition – but IS our value proposition. 

So on the day to days, that looks like being transparent where every incoming dollar goes and over-communicating the progress we’ve made with that social dollar. 

4. What are 5 things you know now that you would tell yourself, 2 years ago, on Day 1 of starting Halad to Health?

Hard to nail it down to just 5 because I think I’ve learned more in these last 2 years than the previous 20 combined but here’s my top 5:

1. In school, business is all about getting something out there that people want.

In the real world, good business is actually all about people.

No matter how good the product/service is, without satisfying customers to the point of 11/10 obsession, you won’t be able to enjoy the network effects which scales demand 10x. 

And without continuing to challenge and inspire an absolutely incredible team to deliver that 11/10 customer service, you’ll be even further away from those network effects. 

So on Day 1, you don’t only need to be prepared to invest ample time and resources to kick-starting everything, but also be prepared to invest emotionally into every single person who comes in contact with the brand.

And to this point, what I know now is that the thing you’ll be most proud of is not the organization’s milestones or achievements, but the growth in people behind the scenes. 

I can not be more proud of all our Halad team members across Australia and the Philippines, who are honestly the powerhouses behind our growth. But too often the fact that they are, first and foremost, humans too gets overlooked. 

Over the last 2 years, the team’s ability to grow to now always exude grace amidst the chaos and meet external conflicts with kindness to go above and beyond is by far the greatest achievement of Halad. 

2. Innovation doesn’t always have to be zero to one 

What we do to provide free health education today isn’t, by definition, anything ‘revolutionary’. Nothing new is invented or technology to leapfrog people into better circumstances made. 

We are essentially taking information and facts we’ve learned and turned that into a narrative local communities can understand. But that actually IS innovation. 

The fact that the people we’ve reached may have never gotten to hear this information before and even if they did, it may not have gotten through before and now we’ve been able to localize the information to match the context they are is… that’s actually innovation. 

Don’t underestimate the power of localizing. 

3. Prioritize & filter out the BS relentlessly

You’re going to get a ton of advice over the years and that also means you’re going to get a ton of bias and projecting of other’s insecurities and dreams onto you. 

Turns out though, you know best and you have to be vigilant enough to filter through what is relevant and what is not. 

4. Start with the smallest niche possible, but dream the opposite 

This is the ironic disconnect for early-stage founders and I still constantly find my mind wandering between the big vision brain and day-to-day brain, but in the early days, those two parts need to be jarringly different and at times you are going to question how you’ll turn this small niche into the big picture dreams. 

Let the vision dream bigger an what you think is possible. 

But ensure the operations smart small and niche to be able to chase those dreams in time. 

5. Check (daily) what insecurities you are projecting onto the day 

Point 3 was filtering out the insecurities others may be projecting onto you. 

This point is checking yourself before you may do that to others or a piece of work you’re doing. Fair game. 

5. Advice for upcoming social entrepreneurs who want to start a startup or social enterprise?

This is an interesting one because looking from the outside, it looks like we essentially run two completely different organizations; a startup to fund our impact in Australia and a philanthropic foundation to make our impact in the Philippines. 

However, actually, I think the early day approach is the same across the two and that is:

There are only really 2 things you need to do as a Day 1 founder/co-founder: 

1. Build something just 1 person absolutely loves (not likes…but genuinely loves) 

2. Find more people, like that first person, who will also love what you’ve built

That’s literally it. 

Day 2 problems will come on Day 2, but you have to get through Day 1 first.

Instagram handle: @haladtohealth              Facebook handle: @haladtohealth 

Eliza Li

Co-founder & Managing Director, Halad to Health

Interviewed By - Syrine Landolsi