Technology for Good
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Chief Information Officer Ed Granger-Happ visits with children in Cairo. July 2009 |
Save the Children Uses Technology to Deliver Programs More Efficiently to Children in Need
Save the Children's Chief Information Officer, Edward Granger-Happ, recently visited the Shousha village in Egypt to see the Early Childhood Development Program. He was stunned to see the school contained only one computer used for record keeping.
Granger-Happ told Iman, the manager of the Early Childhood Development Program, about a software program by Microsoft called MultiPoint that allows many students to interact with one computer in a group activity.
To learn more about Granger-Happ's trip to Cairo, visit his blog at: http://eghapp.blogspot.com/2009/07/lessons-from-field.html
Read presentations and articles about technology by Save the Children's CIO, Edward Granger-Happ
NetHope
Save the Children is the lead agency in an exciting new collaborative called NetHope. Developing countries have scarce telecommunication infrastructures and NetHope is striving to demonstrate that what is available can be more effectively utilized by its members.
NetHope is providing the following benefits:
1. Improved communications to and from field offices and projects;
2. Improved information transfers to and from field offices;
3. Remote web-based application access;
4. Access to the corporate “knowledge base”;
5. Ability to hold net-based meetings without the associated travel and living costs;
6. Ability to use long-distance learning courseware for educating field office workers and children in education programs;
7. Ability for donors to electronically “visit” a community, “meet” with children and program leaders at project sites, to see their donation dollars at work;
8. Ability for all NetHope project participants to communicate with other children in other communities in similar programs;
9. Ability to leverage the vast resources of the Internet to better serve beneficiaries at project sites (e.g. crop price dissemination, drug and alcohol avoidance, land record accuracy, water quality standards, disaster experience sharing);
10. Option to use Voice Over IP (VOIP) telephones for reduced telecommunications costs;
11. Ability to create more hope by exposing children to the range of possibilities communicated on the Internet globally from sponsored schools and youth centers;
The founding members of NetHope are:
• Save the Children, Westport, CT
• World Vision, Monrovia, CA
• CARE, Atlanta, GA
• Mercy Corps, Portland, OR
• Children International, Kansas City, MO
• Catholic Relief Services, Baltimore, MD
• Winrock International, Morrilton, AR
• PLAN International, London UK
• Oxfam, London UK
Cisco Systems, Inc. and the McKinsey Company, through their community support programs, support the NetHope initiative.
FACTS
In 2001, Save the Children participated in the development of FACTS, a web based food and commodity tracking system developed by Microsoft Corporation. Over the past two years, we have implemented the system in our Guatemala, Bolivia and Nicaragua field offices.
FACTS allows us to electronically track food and commodity movement from port of entry through its final distribution. In the past, staff would spend several hours a day managing the process through a variety of manual procedures including inventory, visits to the port of entry to meet the ships, and hours of paperwork. Today, at any given time, we know what is available in our warehouses without the need for several phone calls and physical inventory.
Hours of staff time and paperwork are saved with FACTS and Save the Children can now work more efficiently and effectively in delivering food and supplies directly to the children and families we help.
Last Updated August 2009
