Unlimited funding is a
guarantee of success for any organisation, right? Wrong. In the course of 8 years working with community-based
organisations in developing countries such as India, Jordan and Uganda we
learned that resources need to be coupled with the capacity to strategically
and sustainably invest them.
That is why, in September
of 2010, we set off with a group of MBA students from the University of
Westminster and a programmer from our strategic partner, Westbrook to Kampala,
Uganda. Our mission was to support KCCC, a local clinic that provides free
health care for the local community and neighbouring villages. KCCC had many
patients and one problem: how to keep track of the data and treatment of all
their 5,000 clients. At that point, all
information was managed by using over 10 spread sheets, each managed by a
different department in the organisation.
Westminster students had
done their preliminary research, and our strategic partner Salesforce.com had
kindly donated licenses for their data management system, to be implemented at
KCCC. The group had no more than 2 weeks working with the clinic and
programmers to implement the system and train users. Quite a challenge.
But one that was happily
overcome. By the end of those 2 weeks, KCCC had a new system implemented, with
the information about patients, community workers and drugs already input, not
to mention employees capable of using the system to increase efficiency in
their tasks. This included releasing
four members of staff from data collection and management work to other areas,
capacity building and building capacity!
The project was so
successful that KCCC’s employee responsible to support the system
implementation was invited by Salesforce.com to their annual conference in
California, as a guest speaker reporting his experience.
Almost 4 years after the
project, The Great Generation’s team spotted the lab employees still using the
system in their everyday work life! And we are now preparing for the next
projects that will build on this successful experience, and take KCCC one step
closer to their long term plans.
