Food Security
Food Security
App Streamlines Aid in Haiti.
We empower households and communities to participate in the global marketplace
aid rations and guidance ACDI/VOCA provides on health, nutrition, hygiene and
while concurrently improving the health and nutrition of vulnerable individuals. We help them move beyond governmental or foreign assistance and strengthen their ability to cope during times of shock. Our activities improve crop production and post-harvest handling, ensure resiliency through diversification of income sources and promotion of savings, encourage collective operations and adoption of advanced farming methods, and improve household- and community-level health and nutrition. We also strengthen communities through natural resource management, education and skills development, and food aid to vulnerable populations or survivors of emergencies.
16 | 2011 Annual Report
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“This [ACDI/VOCA] training has changed me! I have acquired knowledge on constitution making, recordkeeping, savings and credit schemes, and with this my work with farmer groups will improve greatly.” — District government agricultural extension agent, Kibuku District, Uganda
sanitation to vulnerable citizens, particularly mothers and children, in Haiti’s Southeast Department through our USAID-funded Multi-Year Assistance Program. We also help farmers improve agricultural practices to grow more and better food to increase resiliency and self-sufficiency. But reaching and assisting rural Haitians is challenging, particularly in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Beneficiaries, distribution sites and clinics are usually in remote areas where roads are crumbling and electricity is sporadic. Until last year, we registered program participants and recorded data using paper forms, later transferring information to computers at our field offices. This method was time-consuming and sometimes led to long lines at distribution sites and gaps or mistakes in program data.
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In 2011 we began using a smartphone application developed in cooperation with students at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, through the Humanitarian Free and Open Software project. The Portable Open Search and Identification Tool, called POSIT, helps us ensure that malnourished beneficiaries in remote areas receive food rations, parents keep their well-child clinic appointments and program resources are properly tracked. POSIT has tailored forms that accommodate multiple languages and allow our teams to update records, register new beneficiaries and record changes in beneficiary status quickly and accurately on smartphones. The data is stored in the phones until there is cell reception, when it is sent by short message service (SMS) directly to a program server at our main office in Jacmel. By late 2011, we had registered 24,000 program beneficiaries through SMS using POSIT. Auditors for USAID’s Regional Inspector General for Haiti were impressed by how well the innovative tool streamlined food distributions and improved data collection. Most importantly, the app has allowed us to overcome formidable obstacles and improve our assistance to Haiti’s citizens.
2011 Annual Report | 17
