To help the flood victims in Kerala, a company called Grolius has created a website that lists the relief camps in the state. What’s more, the company is run by enthusiastic 12-year-olds who are specialised in website development.
Students of Krishnavilasam Upper Primary School in Pangode in Kerala’s Thiruvananthpuram developed encamp.in, a website where each camp can request their requirements separately.
“Each refugee camp will be given a unique login,” Alamsha A S, the 12-year-old Chief Information Officer of Grolius told Manorama Online. She elaborates, “We have created a system where all that a camp requires, right from pampers to doctors, will be listed on the site. The status of the inventory will also be provided.”
At least 100 relief camps have already joined the website which will soon also be able to display the medical status of the people in the camps. Medicine and other supplies can also be requested.
One of the main purpose of the site is to properly supply the relief material being sent instead of it going to waste if not properly utilised. Other services like medical assistance also seem to be disorderly due to the lack of communication, and this is the gap that Team Grolius is seeking to bridge.
The team is mentored by Tarlop, an educational institute whose engineers are dedicated to building a great IT infrastructure. The Grolius team took only two days to set up a website where they had to code and gather information.
Safeer, one of the engineers who mentored the students, told the publication, “Developing the encamp.in website was the children’s way of joining in the relief effort. The code is open to anyone to improve and implement.”
He concluded, “This will give a clear picture of who lost what, and the extent of their losses, to individuals and organisations willing to extend help. There will be a transparent list of the number of people who have lost their homes, businesses, jobs, crops, household articles, anything. This will help both the government and private individuals to target their assistance.”
(Edited by Shruti Singhal)