Volunteer Contributor / ROR / Be a Change Maker! Rural Information Tool

" Be a Change Maker! Rural Information Tool "

Hi Ruby On Rails Community,

Let me introduce myself first. My name is Sunandan Madan and currently pursuing MBA in Rural Management from IRMA, Anand, Gujarat. I am an alumnus of DAIICT (Batch of 2007-11’). I along with my two other batch mates are working on a rural innovation project whose broader objective to help solve the rural needs through the use of ICT. In regards to that we are working to build a web based tool which can be used by NGO’s and other Development Sector Organisations send critical information over phone as a voice.

With the help of college students from my undergrad college we have a basic, easy-to-use voice platform that can be used by NGO’s and Development Sector Organisations to send out critical information like vaccination reminders, pest attacks, govt schemes, market linkages over voice messages to targeted recipients in their local language and dialect.

The current system ( dhwani.herokuapp.com ) is built on open source framework Ruby on Rails, MONGODB , HTML, CSS, Javascript.

Till now we have not made any expense. We don’t have any funding with us to support full time anyone or even part time.We are doing is because of our larger interest to fill information gap in rural areas and because we see this tool as capable of causing great impact in different areas. But there are some funtionalities which are missing in the current tool ( dhwani.herokuapp.com ) before it can be used by any ngo or development sector organisation. Some of the functionalities are :

  1. Making the website in all the major Indian languages (hindi, gujarati, malyalam etc)

  2. Generating analytic reports in the excel based on the call summary

  3. To integrate Dhwani application with multiple service providers. Currently we are using only one service provider whose API we are using to make calls. We want to integrate our application with all those service provider at the backend. Eg: one service provider is Microsoft IVR junction.(http://www.ivrjunction.org/index.html)

  4. Integrating the application with govt websites like Mother and Child Tracking System and open source frameworks like Commcare. (http://www.commcarehq.org/home/)

  5. Some More to come as time proceeds.

We wanted to ask you if some members of the Ruby Community can voluntarily work on this project to make this tool more robust and complete. Since you all are ruby experts it might not be a challenging task for you. But for us it is very difficult to find people who know ruby on rails and are willing to contribute their skills for a social cause.You can find more details at: https://jobs.hasgeek.com/view/9308e .For reference i am also attaching a brief concept note on what this tool is capable of doing. If you are busy with some other engagements and cannot work on this project, we would be really thankful to you if you can help us spread the word or can connect us with someone who can help us.

Please let me know what you think. Any suggestions are welcome.Waiting for your reply.

Sunandan Madanl | Student - Programme in Rural Management | IRMA|

Roll No: 33084 |M: +919601409658 |

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