FICQ's students sign-up for groceries supplies

It all started when, to promote the newly created Facebook group Helping Hands of Australia, I was contacting all individuals and organisations I found on Facebook who were providing help to international students. The whole idea behind creating this group was to make this efficient so that help can be delivered effectively in a targeted suburb.

In this pursuit, I called the GAQ President Parul Ben Mehta on 13th April to explain about this Facebook group and learnt that GAQ and many other member organisations were working with FICQ to help international students in Queensland. While discussing this FICQ initiative, I learnt that FICQ is trying to centralise this initiative by collecting details of affected students and redirecting help to them.

Being an IT professional, I offered my help in case I can be helpful in finding some solution to the students’ issue. Through interaction I found yet another dynamic person Preetham Krishna who was maintaining the database as well as distribution of the grocery kits. So Preetham and I started working on how the ‘Helping Hands of Australia’ initiative can work for FICQ in distributing grocery kits. I also learnt that FICQ was maintaining a manual Excel spreadsheet to gather students’ details, and they were looking for an IT-based solution which could make this easier and quicker. Needless to say, I was privileged to help create this database for them. For me, it didn’t take more than ten minutes to do this.

What’s more was that Preethan Krishna and I could connect the database with a “testing” Facebook page that I created. This worked and that is how I have the admin access to his Gold Coast Facebook page. The test site was tested by other members of the FICQ and got approved and finally got implemented by Preetham Ji on FICQ’s Facebook page.

Interview/materials coordinated by Parul Ben Mehta and Dr Venkat Pulla