May 2010 Updates: The Sankalp Clock ticks on

The month of May was a busy one for the Sankalp volunteers. Most efforts went into getting things moving for the anniversary programme. Nevertheless, some things are always important and they have to move on. The clock ticks on, and so do the volunteers of Sankalp in their respective teams. Here is an update of what happened in the month that went by

Disha

The month of May has been an eventful one for Disha. Many more districts that were not networked has been reached out to, taking the coverage to more than 97% of Karnataka. Blood banks from Tumkur, Chitradurga, Chikmagalur, Hassan have joined into the helpline. The most important aspect is the attempt to enhance the QOS(Quality of Service) of the helpline along with integrating the newer blood banks. Constant efforts are being put in to ensure that the new blood banks integrate well and people get access to the blood that they store.On the publicity front the team sent across 170 letters to various hospitals across the state requesting their support by putting up stickers related to the helpline in their campus. That apart, attempts are being made to take the helpline number to all the Government Hospitals in Karnataka. On similar lines, hospitals in Bangalore also are systematically being visited and the news about the services offered by the helpline number, i.e. 9480044444 is reaching far and wide

Emergency Wing

Summers are always a tough time for the EW volunteers. The phone never stops ringing for them. To their nightmare, the deadly Dengue is back in town. Patients suffering from Dengue need a lot of platelets and they can be satisfied only by platelet apheresis donations. The EW volunteers are constantly alert to take up such requests. In case you wish to be a platelet donor, drop a mail to sankalp.admin@gmail.com

Technical Wing

An important part of oour working is the usage of technology, specifically in terms of knowledge sharing, communication among volunteers, our interactions to the outside world, maintenance of critical data etc. The Sankalp tech team makes a lot of important contribution to the successful working of teams. Team Red (teamred.in), has been a website designed by the tech team. This is a one stop information related to any Sankalp drive that is held in Bangalore, right from Blood banks to volunteers to resources used to feedback to images to problems faced to companies etc etc. The site forms the backbone of the Rakta Kranti Bangalore team. In the previous month, afer a lot of careful review many important upgrades and enhancements were made to this website. Similarly, the organisation has one site for maintaining information about all it's blood donors. Updates and enhancements on this donor sites are on their way at the moment. Also the team faced a critical problem - Low Memory in The server. Consequently the RAM in the server was upgraded to 512MB

Finance & Admin Teams

As the financial year has drawn to a close, it is time to get into the account books to check if the income and expenditure figures are right are wrong. Sankalp is a credible organisation and like every year the finance team is making sure that the account is duly audited. Also, as we crossed an important milestone in the previous month, i.e. we turned 7, it was time to revisit the documents to see if something has to be updated. The Sankalp Board meeting was held and elections to different posts were also carried out. The annual reports are being prepared in the necessary format to be handed over to people

Sankalp Unit