Over the past week, when the city residents came together to rush flood-relief materials, the district administration which was running the material-collection centres here faced a particular problem. There was no way to track the inventory, on what are the available relief materials, what exactly was being sent, and to which all places.
Around this time, hundreds of employees of the Technopark, under the aegis of the socio-cultural collective Prathidhwani, began running a ‘Kerala Needs’ help desk at the Technopark club. A minimalistic website was quickly put together for effective collaboration between various stakeholders such as citizens, government authorities, various NGOs, social media, and volunteers, who are all involved in the relief work.
They set up a call centre at the Technopark club, where calls for relief materials where matched with those having supply in that region. Hundreds of such calls for materials were successfully connected to those having materials. Another group ran a relief material collection centre, from where materials were sent to different parts of the State.
Collector’s call
The District Collector got in touch with the team on Sunday morning, seeking their help to digitise and track the inventory data at the collection centres in the Government Women’s College, SMV Higher Secondary School, Cotton Hill Higher Secondary School, and Priyadarshini Hall. The team issued a call for volunteers to develop the application. Within a short time, more than a hundred responses were received.
Work on the software application began on Sunday afternoon. By night, the team gave a demonstration of the first version of the application to the district administration.
“We spent some time at the collection centres, studied the work flow, and quickly put together the application. From Monday, it was implemented at the relief-material collection centres, where we now have up-to-date records of all the inventory. There is a plan to implement it across all such centres in the State, but we need volunteers who can constantly update the data,” says Nishin, a member of the developing team.
Meanwhile, more than 50 loads of relief materials have been sent from the collection centre run by Prathidhwani.
“The company managements and the Technopark management have been supportive of our efforts. Some companies have spared the employees on the bench for volunteering activities. Since Monday, volunteers have been taking turns, working at their companies and volunteering here. We have fresh sets of volunteers coming in every day,” says Rajeev Krishnan of Prathidhwani.
Families of many Technopark employees hailing from other districts were caught up in floods. Even a few weddings were postponed. With the waters receding and roads clearing up, some of the employees have gone to visit their families, with their cars filled with relief materials to be distributed in the affected areas in their home towns.
