Brought to Life
LMMS has been blogged about, written in case studies and discussed in forums around innovation both internally (World Vision) and externally. The “comic” strip has also been a great medium for people to visualize and gain a basic understanding of how the Last Mile Mobile Solutions works on the ground.
On May 7th, 2010, at World Vision’s, Global Relief Forum, people were given an opportunity to touch, see and feel LMMS. Centered on “Doing Things Differently,” ie. Innovation in the Humanitarian Sector – the day was open to an external audience which included other Non-Governmental Organizations and different levels of the Canadian government.
To showcase the LMMS process, a mock general distribution – for lunch – was developed. Participants were “registered” on the CN50s in the morning. Those from the same organization or same departments were registered as one “household” to demonstrate how the system automatically calculates rations per household upon “distribution.” The “head of the households’” pictures were also taken with the CN50s – a process many enjoyed, though not all enjoyed not being photogenic. All heads of households were then given their bar coded LMMS card which they presented at the exhibition booth.
Though most of the participants had heard about LMMS, they were pleased to see it work “in real life.” That is, once the bar codes from their LMMS cards were scanned, the pictures and data collected automatically popped up – part of the technology that was understood in theory but was fully grasped in the interactive demonstration. For those households with more than one person, participants were shown how the rations (assorted sandwiches, desert, coffee/tea, etc.) were properly calculated (based on pre-set rules). LMMS cards were also printed on the spot, another piece to the process that further exemplified the efficiency and simplicity of LMMS.
Questions and concerns about the feasibility of LMMS were also addressed:
Q: “What if my husband is the head of the household and he is not able to pick up the rations, so I am sent in his place. I am a woman from a country that is not allowed to speak her husband’s name. How do I get the rations?”
A: “Members of the household are inputted into the household information. There would be no need for the woman to speak her husband’s name because she could give her name – which is included in the household information.”
Q: “In some countries, everyone is considered a ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ or ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle.’ How would you input this?”
A: “The fields (information collected) are context specific. This would be discussed with the country staff to ensure the proper and appropriate data is collected.”
Q: “What if the system broke down?”
A: “Once you synchronize, the data is automatically stored in the roaming server. A planned beneficiary distribution list, a report that shows rations quantities each household is entitled, is also produced and taken to the field as a backup. If the system fails, beneficiaries can sign/thumbprint on the sign/thumbprint column provided.
Overall, the ability to showcase and make LMMS interactive with stakeholders at the one day event, further increased the confidence in the LMMS system and promoted the importance of innovation in humanitarian action.