image description image description
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Legatum center for development & entrepreneurship

Legatum Center Blog

Below is an article from the Legatum Center

image description image description
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Legatum center for development & entrepreneurship

Legatum Center Blog

Below is an article from the Legatum Center

One Mask at a Time: MIT Turns Thought into Action

 

Students at MIT have found themselves amid a great wave as a result of the recent COVID-19 outbreak. On the cusp of this unforeseen—and unimaginable—change both short and long term, how are they to act? While the fear is palpable, over everything from one’s own and others’ health to work disruptions and financial security, our community has chosen to charge forward and take initiative. On a daily basis, we receive account of students and faculty coming together to find new ways of tackling the virus in practice. The MIT motto mens et manus (mind and hand) is especially apparent today as we see an increasing number of community members turning thoughts into action, treating the pandemic not as a roadblock, but as an opportunity for groundbreaking innovation and entrepreneurship. At the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, we have also come to notice that mind and hand has a lot to do with the heart: kindness and compassion are at the core of how we are dealing with the crisis.

The Legatum Center was established to promote a culture of inclusive prosperity by building pathways for the next generation of change agents who, through principled entrepreneurial leadership, will create good jobs, transform systems, and improve lives. Ahmed Mady, an EMBA ’21 student at MIT Sloan, clearly embodies these values—he recently came together with some of his EMBA peers to address a major issue brought on by the pandemic: the lack of protective equipment. “It’s very sad to see that our healthcare professionals and our frontline defenders cannot protect themselves,” he said. Mady is a physician himself who noted the lack early on, and stressed the need for healthcare professionals to have access to the equipment they need to keep themselves and their patients safe. He and his peers put their hands, minds and hearts together to identify ways to create alternative masks to protect healthcare workers.

In response to the CDC’s latest recommendation of using cloth face masks in public, Mady turned to his family who have a textile factory in Egypt, urging them to manufacture face masks out of a cotton-blend fabric. Together with his colleagues, Mady drew on a study published by the University of Cambridge to design a textile mask with a filter pocket—achieving a higher-than-standard efficacy than the average cloth masks. “Other household materials, including cotton, fabric or cotton-blends can…range between high 60 to early 70 percent effectiveness,” Ahmed explains. “But with the surgical filter, we can have good protection that can reach up to 90 percent [effectiveness].”

Cloth masks don’t replace the healthcare industry’s need for N95 masks, but in light of the new health guidelines, everyone needs to wear a mask—and Mady gets this. While healthcare workers certainly play an integral role in the fight against the virus, we tend to overlook our own contribution as risk factors within the pandemic. “If you think about how you…flatten this curve, the frontline defenders are actually us,” Mady explains. In other words, the more people stay at home, practice social distancing, and use protective equipment when leaving their homes, the more quickly and effectively we are able to defeat the virus. Even though the original idea was to focus on healthcare workers, responding to the new guidelines announced by the U.S. government advising all people to wear cloth masks, Ahmed decided to do what most good entrepreneurs do; he pivoted his plans to instead focus on providing masks for the general public.

While Mady is currently focusing his efforts on the US by manufacturing and shipping around 50,000 masks per week overseas, the operations of this initiative are rooted in his beloved Egypt. He decided to donate the first 10,000 masks he manufactured to hospitals throughout Egypt in need of resources. A thank you note from the Faculty of Medicine at Alexandria University acknowledged his efforts. Healthcare professionals in Egypt are in dire need for any type of mask; hospitals are continuing to struggle with severe shortages in protective gear and the cost of a single masks has risen to 150 Egyptian pounds— 4% of the average income (according to The Middle East Monitor). Among hospital workers, cloth masks are better protection than none at all—especially with Mady’s model, which has the option of adding a filter to maximize protection.

This initiative targets an urgent problem that faces developing countries especially: where healthcare professionals don’t have access to the protective equipment they need to fight the virus, where governments are outbid in the international market for medical supplies for care workers, and where there is general population density, and everyone is encouraged to wear a mask. Mady’s mask prototype can easily be produced in bulk, especially in countries like India or Ethiopia that already have a large textile industry. The cotton-surgical hybrid of the N95 could offer an effective—if not officially condoned—solution to help flatten the curve, particularly in areas where the virus is just starting to take hold. Mady predicts the masks can be a medium of mitigating the virus in Egypt, where the epidemic is slowly taking its toll: “everybody is going to get hit,” he explains, “sadly, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ anymore, but ‘when.’”

Ahmed Mady’s spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation is emblematic of what drives MIT as a whole—a spirit that remains present even during the most uncertain of times. “When I mentioned the initiative to them and what I was doing in my factory, I was overwhelmed by the level of support I received from many of my classmates,” Ahmed said. As Faculty Director of the MIT Legatum Center, and one of Ahmed’s professors in the Executive MBA program, Fiona Murray has linked Ahmed into different MIT networks and helped him build bridges across different experts at MIT. As she sees it, “Ahmed’s innovative approach captures the spirit that drives MIT’s entire community—a spirit of hands-on, practical determination that continues to fuel and energize each and every one of us, especially during times of crisis.” As long as we continue to come together as a community, fuse our minds and hearts and offer help and support where needed, there’s hope that we’ll soon be able to conquer an issue even as large and seemingly insurmountable as a global pandemic.

At the MIT Sloan School of Management, ideas are made to matter. The work that Ahmed is leading with incredible passion and the full utilization of all resources he has at hand, both in US and in Egypt—his home country—exemplifies this belief. Ahmed launched a public campaign asking for people to donate N95/KN95 masks to healthcare professionals and essential workers in exchange for his cloth-based model. The campaign, “Masks 2 Heroes,” will allow his company to purchase the raw materials needed to manufacture the textile masks, as well as secure the shipment of FDA-approved medical masks for frontline workers. In addition, Mady has plans to scale up his initiative in Egypt in the coming weeks. Ahmed Mady’s campaign and masks are an exemplary case of our school. This idea most definitely matters —to each and every one of us.

Click here to support Ahmed’s initiative.


Written by
Rafaela Marinello, Communications Coordinator, Legatum Center

Dina Sherif, Executive Director, Legatum Center

One Mask at a Time: MIT Turns Thought into Action

Students at MIT have found themselves amid a great wave as a result of the recent COVID-19 outbreak. On the cusp of this unforeseen—and unimaginable—change both short and long term, how are they to act? While the fear is palpable, over everything from one’s own and others’ health to work disruptions and financial security, our community has chosen to charge forward and take initiative. On a daily basis, we receive account of students and faculty coming together to find new ways of tackling the virus in practice. The MIT motto mens et manus (mind and hand) is especially apparent today as we see an increasing number of community members turning thoughts into action, treating the pandemic not as a roadblock, but as an opportunity for groundbreaking innovation and entrepreneurship. At the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, we have also come to notice that mind and hand has a lot to do with the heart: kindness and compassion are at the core of how we are dealing with the crisis.

The Legatum Center was established to promote a culture of inclusive prosperity by building pathways for the next generation of change agents who, through principled entrepreneurial leadership, will create good jobs, transform systems, and improve lives. Ahmed Mady, an EMBA ’21 student at MIT Sloan, clearly embodies these values—he recently came together with some of his EMBA peers to address a major issue brought on by the pandemic: the lack of protective equipment. “It’s very sad to see that our healthcare professionals and our frontline defenders cannot protect themselves,” he said. Mady is a physician himself who noted the lack early on, and stressed the need for healthcare professionals to have access to the equipment they need to keep themselves and their patients safe. He and his peers put their hands, minds and hearts together to identify ways to create alternative masks to protect healthcare workers.

Mady’s family textile factory in Egypt

In response to the CDC’s latest recommendation of using cloth face masks in public, Mady turned to his family who have a textile factory in Egypt, urging them to manufacture face masks out of a cotton-blend fabric. Together with his colleagues, Mady drew on a study published by the University of Cambridge to design a textile mask with a filter pocket—achieving a higher-than-standard efficacy than the average cloth masks. “Other household materials, including cotton, fabric or cotton-blends can…range between high 60 to early 70 percent effectiveness,” Ahmed explains. “But with the surgical filter, we can have good protection that can reach up to 90 percent [effectiveness].”

Cloth masks don’t replace the healthcare industry’s need for N95 masks, but in light of the new health guidelines, everyone needs to wear a mask—and Mady gets this. While healthcare workers certainly play an integral role in the fight against the virus, we tend to overlook our own contribution as risk factors within the pandemic. “If you think about how you…flatten this curve, the frontline defenders are actually us,” Mady explains. In other words, the more people stay at home, practice social distancing, and use protective equipment when leaving their homes, the more quickly and effectively we are able to defeat the virus. Even though the original idea was to focus on healthcare workers, responding to the new guidelines announced by the U.S. government advising all people to wear cloth masks, Ahmed decided to do what most good entrepreneurs do; he pivoted his plans to instead focus on providing masks for the general public.

While Mady is currently focusing his efforts on the US by manufacturing and shipping around 50,000 masks per week overseas, the operations of this initiative are rooted in his beloved Egypt. He decided to donate the first 10,000 masks he manufactured to hospitals throughout Egypt in need of resources. A thank you note from the Faculty of Medicine at Alexandria University acknowledged his efforts. Healthcare professionals in Egypt are in dire need for any type of mask; hospitals are continuing to struggle with severe shortages in protective gear and the cost of a single masks has risen to 150 Egyptian pounds— 4% of the average income (according to The Middle East Monitor). Among hospital workers, cloth masks are better protection than none at all—especially with Mady’s model, which has the option of adding a filter to maximize protection.

Mady’s masks come in a variety of fun colors and designs

This initiative targets an urgent problem that faces developing countries especially: where healthcare professionals don’t have access to the protective equipment they need to fight the virus, where governments are outbid in the international market for medical supplies for care workers, and where there is general population density, and everyone is encouraged to wear a mask. Mady’s mask prototype can easily be produced in bulk, especially in countries like India or Ethiopia that already have a large textile industry. The cotton-surgical hybrid of the N95 could offer an effective—if not officially condoned—solution to help flatten the curve, particularly in areas where the virus is just starting to take hold. Mady predicts the masks can be a medium of mitigating the virus in Egypt, where the epidemic is slowly taking its toll: “everybody is going to get hit,” he explains, “sadly, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ anymore, but ‘when.’”

Ahmed Mady’s spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation is emblematic of what drives MIT as a whole—a spirit that remains present even during the most uncertain of times. “When I mentioned the initiative to them and what I was doing in my factory, I was overwhelmed by the level of support I received from many of my classmates,” Ahmed said. As Faculty Director of the MIT Legatum Center, and one of Ahmed’s professors in the Executive MBA program, Fiona Murray has linked Ahmed into different MIT networks and helped him build bridges across different experts at MIT. As she sees it, “Ahmed’s innovative approach captures the spirit that drives MIT’s entire community—a spirit of hands-on, practical determination that continues to fuel and energize each and every one of us, especially during times of crisis.” As long as we continue to come together as a community, fuse our minds and hearts and offer help and support where needed, there’s hope that we’ll soon be able to conquer an issue even as large and seemingly insurmountable as a global pandemic.

At the MIT Sloan School of Management, ideas are made to matter. The work that Ahmed is leading with incredible passion and the full utilization of all resources he has at hand, both in US and in Egypt—his home country—exemplifies this belief. Ahmed launched a public campaign asking for people to donate N95/KN95 masks to healthcare professionals and essential workers in exchange for his cloth-based model. The campaign, “Masks 2 Heroes,” will allow his company to purchase the raw materials needed to manufacture the textile masks, as well as secure the shipment of FDA-approved medical masks for frontline workers. In addition, Mady has plans to scale up his initiative in Egypt in the coming weeks. Ahmed Mady’s campaign and masks are an exemplary case of our school. This idea most definitely matters —to each and every one of us.

Click here to support Ahmed’s initiative.

Written by
Rafaela Marinello, Communications Coordinator, Legatum Center 
Dina Sherif, Executive Director, Legatum Center

You might also like

    Subscribe to our Newsletter.

    There was an error trying to subscribe. Please try again later.

    Thank you, you've been successfully subscribed.

    One or more fields have an error. Please check and try again.