The Project

I probably mentioned in a previous post how I was doing some IT stuff here. I think it's a cool project. So here's what it is:

1. As I mentioned OA doesn't believe in institutionalised care and therefore have a number of children in foster homes - where possible with relatives or family friends of the deceased parents. OA provides them with money to look after the child, to send him/her to school, for medicines etc.

2. Social Workers visit the children to ensure they are doing well and are not being neglected or mistreated. They visit at different frequencies - ranging from once a week to once a quarter depending on the circumstances.

3. They file a report after each follow-up which is reviewed by the director of OA or Lisa for signs that the child needs further attention or taken out of the foster home. This could be things like - child no longer at school, child looks weak and malnutritioned, foster family hasn't collected money, signs of abuse.

Problems with this process:

1. Right now all this is done on paper - obvious problems with that considering there are 600 odd kids all over Ghana.

2. No formalised process where reports can be rejected and more details requested from Social Workers.

3. No reminders for SW to visit a child. SW sometimes is late or forgets to visit child.

4. No reporting!

So... I have the task of automating it using PHP, MySQL, SSL etc. It will be a webapp.

Biggest problem I have right now is getting access to a computer where I can work! So if you have spare laptops you wish to donate let me know. Would have been great if I could have kept my accenture laptop. My second biggest problem is creating a webapp with only 4 hrs of solar power.

Another cool thing - I'm blogging from a OLPC - One Laptop Per Child. Look it up on google. Someone donated one recently. Very awesome.

On a personal note - there has been no running water for a week now :S