Eliza Li (centre), co-founder of Halad to Health in action.

The ygap First Gens team spoke with First Gens alumni and Halad to Health co-founder, Eliza Li about the impact of the pandemic on their venture, how they are supporting frontline healthcare workers and their vision for a world beyond COVID-19. 

How has Covid-19 affected/impacted your venture?

We had been seeing incredible growth on our social impact side of being able to provide free health education programs to more schools and communities in the Philippines and by the end of 2019 had just pilot tested our GAMSAT tuition services with over 50 students. During this unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic, our ordinary operations and impact work were basically made impossible, but we were set on doing our part in supporting the global response to this truly devastating health crisis.

What has been the response of Halad to Health to the global pandemic? 

Although we were hard hit, we took a gamble. Within a week, we quadrupled our GAMSAT tuition service capabilities, scaled up and moved all teaching online and started a COVID-19 Campaign that saw proceeds from our tuition services going directly to frontline healthcare workers across the world.

We launched the Covid-19 Campaign and fortunately, aspiring medical students responded. First students from Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland… then Tassie, Western Australia and even the UK were enrolling in our GAMSAT services. It was an overwhelming outpour of generosity, from aspiring health students to support frontline professionals they admired so much, to say the least.

In the month of April, we’ve had 300+ students enrol in various GAMSAT tuition events as part of the Covid-19 Campaign, who have collectively raised $8500AUD+ for frontline responders. 

For International Nurses Day on May 12th 2020, we are donating these funds to support and thank all frontliners working around the clock at:

1. Valencia Adventist Medical Center
2. Mindanao Foundation Hospital
3. Valencia City – Triage Centre
4. Valencia City – PUM Central
5. Bukidnon Provincial Hospital (Maramag)
6. The Alfred Hospital (Melbourne)
7. Alfred Health Sandringham Hospital
8. Alfred Health Caulfield Hospital

What challenges have you faced?

I think so many entrepreneurs and business owners can agree that the biggest challenge these last few months has just been the unprecedented amount of uncertainty.

Do we run? Do we close? Do we invest in recruiting? How much do we recruit?

Not having all the answers when everyone in the organisation is looking to you for them is an uncomfortable situation but a much needed reminder of a lesson that I took away from the ygap First Gens accelerator – that the only thing guaranteed is change.

Being able to navigate uncertainty has been a major learning lesson. You not only need to be able to picture the light at the end of the tunnel, but also need to paint that picture for your team to come to work everyday just as inspired, positive and hopeful. 

What are the key ingredients for quickly adapting and successfully overcoming challenges?

An incredible team you can rely on like family.

A level of over-communication.

And a tonne of love for what you do.

I truly believe that founders get too much credit and team members never enough. We truly would not have been able to scale to this capacity without each and every Halad team member. They are the ones who work day in and out to make our Covid-19 pivot work, show authorship over their role in the big picture of things and go above and beyond to help someone else out if they’re struggling. And that is what I call family. 

During this time of external uncertainty, we couldn’t risk creating any uncertainty within Halad and needed to give everyone clear cut clarity on what we were doing and going to do. For us, that looked like calling everyone to check in on them, personally give them a role and spell out how you want everyone to communicate.

And it goes without saying, that love for what you do, is the common denominator that binds people together in times of separation. 

Do you have any advice to other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to cope/adapt?

Focus on the things you CAN control. 

What does a post covid-19 world look like for your venture?

Post COVID-19, we’re going to be stronger than ever. Our team has proven that we can turn dismal situations into growing opportunities and that nothing can stop us from doing good.

We’ll continue to scale up our (now international) GAMSAT tuition capabilities to teach our growing student base and, in turn, be able to run more free health education initiatives to schools in rural Philippines.

Halad to Health is an Australian not-for-profit closing the gap in global health inequality by providing free health education to disadvantaged rural communities in the Philippines, which is funded by their GAMSAT (Medical School Admissions Exam) tuition services.

Eliza Li participated in the May 2018 First Gens cohort.