See & Be Seen, LLC Information

Who We Are See & Be Seen is a distribution company that socially markets high-quality, durable, reflector-enhanced school bags in Africa. We produce these bags for children ages 5-14 attending primary school in Tanzania and other developing countries with high rates of road traffic injuries. Our Purpose Road traffic injury (RTI) is the number one cause of death for children in Africa ages five and over, above HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Each day, 90 children are killed and 1,000 are seriously injured on Africa’s roads. Our purpose is to help reduce the incidence of these injuries through the social marketing of reflector-enhanced products via a sustainable, growing business that does not harm healthy market activity on the continent. Why This Work Matters For every child that is killed on the roads, 10 more are seriously injured. In the developed world, the majority of child RTIs occur in vehicles. By contrast, most children injured by traffic accidents in Africa and other developing regions are pedestrians. These children are particularly vulnerable at dusk and dawn while walking to and from school. There are many reasons for this situation: roads in both urban and rural areas suffer from poor design and upkeep; sidewalks are often non-existent; drivers are poorly trained; streetlights are rare; and vehicles are often badly maintained. These factors constitute an extremely dangerous road environment for children, the most vulnerable road users in the developing world. Our Successful Operations Model Our business originates from road traffic safety work conducted with school administrators, parents, and children in Tanzania and Ghana by our nonprofit partner, Amend. Through their suggestions for ways to help make children more visible, See & Be Seen was born. In January 2011, we sold our second shipment to Tanzania of 2,000 bags in five days at a price competitive with the cheapest bags and a quality comparable to the highest-price bags.