Construct a public/non-profit/not-for-profit exercise facility, closely mimicking nature, including community input, where "exercise" stations are actually fun, relatively safe, and stress multi-muscle movements.

I am new and don't know if I am going in the right direction so help me guys.
My idea for Social Business for improving the health of low income communities would be beekeeping if that is possible in the area mentioned. Consumption of honey increases the immune system of the body and honey is used in different diseases.
Addition to this Beekeeping gives income from various by products like honey, pollen, royal jelly, propolis, wax, etc that in turn brings money so that the family can meet their basic needs as well as can get treatment in case of major diseases.
Grameen can also market the honey products by giving it a brand.
Vegetable cultivation can be another option to improve the health of low income families.

Social impact is what we are all looking for as a proof of concept that our initiatives have touched people's lives. Let me share with you a success story from the Grameen foundation an NGO. Experienced in mobile technology, building sustainable and scalable social businesses models - targeting the poor of the poorest, especially women. Grameen foundation in its AppLabs, has piloted 2 separate Mobile applications in different, but pertinent fields.

Agriculture: A trusted community volunteer, trained to become a community knowledge worker (CKW) is armed with a smart phone to disseminate and collect valuable agriculture related data, is planted in an area covering approximately 500-750 households. Which harbor the targeted small scale farmers. The Ag information provided ranges from Garden preparation to post harvest handling, specific disease and pest control in animals, and market information.
                                 
Health: The Google SMS health application piloted in Uganda. Allows a phone user to SMS a sexual and reproductive related query to the 6001 code and gets an instant response through the same channel. Was tested between 2009 -2010. This model was improved and adopted in Ghana under the Mobile technology for community health (Motech). Which has two interrelated applications. The Mobile midwife application - which allows pregnant women and their families to receive weekly SMS or Voice alerts, and reminders in their local languages. The information provided includes; prenatal treatment reminders and advice to help deal with challenges during pregnancy.
                                 
The community health workers are also able to record and track the care delivered to the mothers and the newborns using the Nurses' Application. Nurses enter data about patients' clinic visits, into forms which are found in the low-end mobile Java enabled phone seated at the area clinic.
                                 
Now to experience change in the livelihoods of low-income communities, women should be a major target. Fore footing solutions which are practical, sustainable and replicable all over the world.

Sometime back I used to work in an NGO in India. They were working on a pilot project of community business. They used to form communities in low income areas. Community members were usually female members as female are usually homemakers and they don't work. Each member of the community would contribute small money every month. That fund was used to start a community business of making cheap sanitary napkins for women. This would not only make families economically more stable but also improve hygienic conditions for women.
This was a great initiative.

I visited fairtrade coffee farmers in Caldas in 2008. It was surreal to see many coffee farmers literally carrying beans in a bag on their backs walking miles on bad roads to the nearest seller. Fairtrade had a positive component because it not only paid premiums that helped communities, particularly enabling more students to attend school, it also had environmental requirements in terms of water conservation and chemicals used. Such requirements created more opportunities. One example was a group of farmers I met who told me that as they were dumping less pesticides into the water, more fish were coming creating another industry for them to make money in addition to farming. Others that had livestock were trained on how to turn pig manure into methane power which created drastic savings on energy costs for households. A challenge faced during that time was currency fluctuation. From my observations, I think it is important for communities to have multiple avenues of revenues and not rely entirely on income from exports to avoid being hit so hard and balance out hits from times of difficulties such as droughts and currency fluctuations.

I do agree with Ogo's point below on how more programs should be targeted towards women. A great example of that was many of the methane power stations were run and managed by women. It allowed them to spend more time at home and less time having to do remedial jobs such as weeding and walking on fields of large land owners. I'd love to hear other examples of creating income generation opportunities in such communities that otherwise didn't exist or an environmental innovation or practice that ended up creating jobs as well.

What are some of the non-profits or other social enterprises in and around Caldas that are already trying to address this issue if any? What sort of government programs or funding do they have

I think that solutions to these issues such as malnutrition, infant mortality and reproductive and sexual health would be first education, women especially. ,
They really need to understand their environment, outcome of their daily lifestyles etc. I believe in using entertainment education to motivate such behavior change, it has to be through a means they can irresistibly identify with.
in most communities there is this belief that certain food or lifestyle is for certain people, but its totally true, the healthiest things we need for our grat health are most times more available to the poor and by this I mean fruits, vegetables and exercises which they do as past of life.
Jobs should be provided, skill acquisition and Economic empowerment for the women and all these will be less. When they are engaged there wont be time for so many things but the necessary ones.

Just want to say hi! Im new to openideo & love what ive seen so far
Hope i can become a productive participator in the near future - pls be patient with me as i learn how to post :-)

Charity= giving a man a fish, Social business= teaching a man to fish.
Absolutely wonderful.

In this comment section under the challenge-briefs you seem to always get a lot of people that post suggestions. Why not de-activate the comment function here? and make a clearer linking point to where people should post their inspirations and concept proposals? (the grey flag with Start the challenge is not obvious enough)

( I know that I should have posted this idea elsewhere, but to prove my point to you i just stuck it here )
(and note that i love the comment section in all the posted inspirations and concepting stages, because the discussions there seem to spawn many new ideas in the process)
have a great weekend!

Hi guys, being Colombian myself I'm particularly sensitive about this challenge and excited to begin concepting! I don't mean to be anal but on the last infoviz Colombia is spelled wrong... it's a common mistake to change to 'o' for a 'u', like the university.

Awesome concept! Totally believe in it! Keep it up! : )

Acumen Fund has a great video that explains social business - http://www.acumenfund.org/areyouready/home.

Good inspiration for this challenge.

The Center for Health Market Innovations has a great, completely free database of over 800 unique and interesting programs to improve access to health for the poor, including five in Colombia. A lot of these programs are implemented by social entrepreneurs and it could be a really great jumping off point for inspirations!

http://healthmarketinnovations.org/programs

I just came from speaking at an event for The Alliance for a Healthier Generation (Jamie Oliver, Rachel Ray, Paul Pierce support them) where I serve as one of their Champions & this OpenIDEO challenge hit home regarding social business making a difference – The Alliance was founded by the Clinton Foundation + the American Heart Association w/major support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation(they gave a $23 Million grant to their US Healthy Schools Program on Monday/$51 Million to date - www.healthiergeneration.org. The Alliance is a great example of an organization benefiting from social business!

Fundamentals (or the root causes) need to be rectified first before any thought off solutions can be implemented. I believe that living conditions need to be improved first. Better living conditions should yield the reduction of asbestos usage, overcrowding, and transmission of contagious diseases. Once these can be improved on, the next step is to improve their quality of life by leveraging on social businesses.

The challenge here can be moved in either concurrently or sequentially. However, the latter approach will be systematically feasible, as the improvements will help the residents of Caldas realise what they can achieve in their lives (as they scale up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs).

Echo Shamira's comment - EDUCATION...
Identify the "true" Caldas community leaders (+ identifying the rising leaders) & create an alliance/trust with those leaders via education.

It seems that the challenge / problem lays very deep into the culture of the region. To solve this means to help the locals to be more aware ( knowledgeable) of the problems they might never considered.

Yunus sums up the case for social business well, "Charity dollars have only one life. If you use it, its done. But if you define this into a social business, that social business dollar has endless life, because it recycles. So you touch many more lives."

This background brief is the best one yet. It really does cover a lot of bases!

This is likely going to succeed ... think coffee.

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Empower community members to start door to door service enterprise in which they administer basic medical tests medicines.