Sathya Sai Seva Project

The mobile app allows for easy pre- collection of data in Villages.

There are a number of considerations when dealing with aid and volunteer services in countries like India and Africa. There are many dedicated groups which go out to help the poor and needy in various villages. Usually what happens is that an advance scouting team goes out to determine if the village would be receptive to aid before the larger team shows up with medical equipment and aid. This advance team has things set up before the larger team arrives. Sometimes, not all members of the advance team actually are part of the larger service team. This may happen due to scheduling conflicts as almost all volunteers in these activities are having other full time work, and the volunteering happens on Saturday and Sunday usually. People take notes by hand or send text messages. One of the problems is that in the remote villages cell service is not there. Also, one must be at one of the meetings where the update is made available as there is no mechanism to distribute notes since information is fast changing. This also means that unless accurate information is available, only general stuff makes it on the larger trip. For the most part, this means that utilization of transport is poor as some things are not accounted for. Almost all the material is usually purchased by volunteers in the group as there is no exchange of money in the group and all donors contribute anonymously as per group rules.

This app tracks the village visited, and also the people’s needs in the village visited by the team. It has a few placeholders for various kinds of commonly used information. The idea is to be able to generate reports based on the information logged so that when a team visits the village, it becomes a very targeted service activity. This helps us to minimize our resource spending. The reason we are developing an mobile app rather than modifying an available note taking tool is cost. Customizable tools charge money/person /month. This is how the app developers seem to want to make money. This cost takes away opportunities that would have otherwise existed. This is why I am making something that has the exact features my father’s group needs. I am hoping to make changes to it once it gets deployed and people tell me how it is.