John Kelley Hinsdale >> Work Experience >> Little Sisters of the Assumption

John K. Hinsdale

Work Experience: Little Sisters of the Assumption

PRO-BONO COMPUTER AND DATABASE SUPPORT

The Little Sisters of the Assumption are a group of Catholic nuns and lay people serving people in need. Their Family Health Services (FHS) office in East Harlem, New York City. The office is primarily a resource for maternal and family health for women.

My work at the Little Sisters' involves maintaing the hardware and software so that they can keep up to date, accurate records of services provided, and produce summary reports. These reports are important for purposes of obtaining grants and re-imbursements from government agencies and charitable organizations. All fees are waived yearly as contributions to the Sisters' efforts.

PRO-BONO SUPPORT: Project Summary

Timeline: 2000 - 2002

Technologies: Microsoft Access

Contribution: One to two days per month. Fix bugs in reporting, create new reports, add fields as needed. Maintain hardware, networking and Internet connectivity.

Lessons learned: At times, a relatively small amount of effort can make a very big difference to some users. Here, bugs in the old reporting mechanisms were causing the Sisters to under-report services, which directly affected funding.

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