The Village Diary is a free and open source (FOSS) software platform designed for any organization to download, use and modify to suit their needs. The system is designed from the ground up to work in conditions where resources such as Internet bandwidth and computing power is limited. In most cases, any available computer can be made to function with the platform with minimal setup time. It is equally available in a portable mode that may be run from a USB device.
There are four steps involved in the data collection and distribution process:
Source documents (wills, birth & marriage certificates, property titles, etc.) are collected
from families by a custodian chosen by the community. If these documents do not exist,
the Guardian Parent Association (GPA) will work with individuals and relevant authorities
to establish them.
A fieldworker, using a laptop equipped with the Village Diary platform and a portable
document scanner, captures digital copies of source documents and related diary entries. Multimedia material such as photos,
video and audio may also be collected at this stage.
Data is encrypted and delivered to an administrator who verifies and uploads diary
entries to the web server. Optionally, the Diary may be maintained as the private, self-hosted data repository
of an organization.
Information is made accessible via secure login to state attorneys, social workers, health
officials and aid organizations. As the status of case files is updated, feedback is immediately
provided to the beneficiaries via FrontlineSMS.
For technical details about how the platform functions, see the requirements section on the Developer Wiki.