Disaster Mitigation and Management Group
The protocols for the training of volunteers and others who are willing to participate in Disaster Relief program are being finalized. Some of them can be named as Code Red Protocols, Communication Protocols and Financial Protocols. Other categories will eventually be decided to come up with a complete set of training protocols during the time of disasters.
Apart from the planning, first steps to making this program a public program was taken up. A Candle Light Vigil was held on 25th December to mark the 6th anniversary of Tsunami attack on the Indian shores. Read about the event here. Following this event, it was also further decided to have a program on 26th January for the Disaster Preparedness and Awareness pragram of Sankalp. For the training a disaster specific site has been decided and the practice will start with this specific site.
Admin and Finance
December was a very happening month at the Admin front in Sankalp. The month started with the search for most stringent compliance norms for an organization. We together the toughest parameters from Credibility Alliance and Give India, the front runners in promoting transparency and accountability for their member organisations. Then we started on the tough journey to plug all loopholes that we had. The following were the major activities undertaken:
All formalities that are required with the Society Registration for renewal were completed. This is a regular annual activity of Admin team. All the procedures for this year has been completed now.
Sankalp's bank accounts were better tuned to meet the needs of the organisation in Disaster scenario. Some of the requirements included availability of facilities like Net banking and other easier transaction modes. These were looked into now and taken care of.
Sankalp adopted the Procurement Policy for the organisation.
Sankalp set up the Medical Advisory Board for the organisation. It includes the heads of most of the important medical Institutions and blood banks in Bangalore. They will be consulted for all the medical related decisions to be taken by Sankalp further down the line.
Decision was taken and work done to setup 'Initiative for Better Blood Banking'. This wing works to develop the overall blood banking system with its initiatives. One example of the initiative under this wing can be stated as the Workshop last year which was taken up on the topic of Component separation of blood.
Annual feedback process was completed a few weeks ago and they were given the volunteers. The feedback from the volunteers towards the Organization as a whole was also looked into. The outcome of the feedback process was used to identify training and mentoring needs for next 6 months and plans were drawn out.
Postbox email Id was set up for Sankalp. This email id will be used to maintain the track and the archival of all the communication with people who are external to the Organization.
Sankalp was registered with Guidestar. This is an Organization which provides information about the credible Non-Profit Organizations all over the world. All the procedures for the registration with Guidestar were handled in the past few months and finally Sankalp is now registered with Guidestar.
Decisions were made to further strengthen the Sankalp Seniors Team.
Brainstorming was done to identify possible avenues to increase the funding for the organisation and appropriate action items initiated.
With this, the organisation is poised to take up larger responsibilities and ensure ever increasing quality, transparency and credibility. Looks like a good way to enter the new year.
Emergency Wing
There were totally 97 blood requests in the previous month, which also included the two bombay blood group requests. There was a bombay blood group donation for Kiran (Read about him here) who suffers from Thallesemia and requires transfusion approximately once every month.
Apart from this request, other 9 requests also required blood donation for the patients. The previous month saw a rise in number of requests for the rare blood groups like AB+ and AB-. They accounted for about 35 requests out of the total 97 requests. Read about one of the interesting blood request from Emergency wing here.
Apart from Bangalore, there were also significant requests from all over the state of Karnataka and they rose upto 25 requests. There has been good progress with respect to Bombay blood group donor registration as there were help provided in critical conditions by others who knew other Bombay blood group donors and so the communications were established, followed up and they donors were finally registered.
MSRMBDS
MSRMBDS Camp was held on 2nd December 2010 in MSR Dental College. It was only a 2 hour camp as the donation hall was booked for other event on the same day. But the response was pretty good from the college as there were 17 donations in those two hours.
Resources
The month of December gave the first print of Sankalp Patrika. The test run was made to ensure the understanding of the entire process. Due to this test run, many problems were identified and they were rectified immediately. The first print was sent to the Registrar office in New Delhi to complete the registration process. The registration certificate is yet to be received from the Delhi office. The issue of January month has also been printed and this edition will be the first public release of the Sankalp Patrika. You can request for a copy of Sankalp Patrika here.
The receipt book for this year has been printed. All the financial contributions to Sankalp has been and will continue to be acknowledged with a receipt. This receipt can be used for Tax Exemption purposes as Sankalp has now been registered for 80G.
Tech team
A lot of activities have been going on in the background for Sankalp in the wing of Sankalp Tech. The volunteers in this wing has been working towards making our websites a more pleasant experience to the users and other volunteers. Some of the activities out of the hub are listed below.
- Upgraded Disha Site. With extensive hospital visits and better call logging requirements, the site has been updated with all the stated requirements.
- New UI(Theme) for Karmabhoomi and Donors Site. Both these sites are internal working sites. A new look and feel to motivate the volunteers :)
- RK School Site Improvements. With better usage of the site come more requirements, these have been implemented to improve the performance of the website.
- Issue Tracking in Team Red Site and Date Issues resolved.
- UI changes for Sankalpindia.net front page done.
- Created Website for IBBB. This is to maintain the information related to Initiative for Better Blood Banking at one place.
- Able to Stream video files for IBBB Site - You can watch videos in this site!
- Created Webforms for Projects for Capturing KPIs. This is an on going process.
- Minimized Server Crashes.
- Improvements on Sankalp Website Monitoring.
- URL indexing issues from Lookingforblood.org resolved.
- Reworking on Sankalp Chatbot for better features.
- Upgrade / Revamp Fancy Theme For Sankalpindia. This is also another on going process.
- Working on Tech Opportunities / Issues / Feature Requests by other teams.
Rakta Kranti Bangalore
Due to the shortage of blood, two blood donation drives were conducted in Lucent on 2 days, that is, 22 and 23 December. Together on both days, about 82 units were collected which is considered a good response in a short duration.