Avni Conference, Goa, January 2023 - Day 4

January 16, 2023 by Beulah Evanjalin

In this blog, we have covered the happenings of the fourth day of the Avni Conference at Goa, January 2023.

Welcome to Day 4 of Avni Sprint January 2023, Goa. Day 4 brought us a great bond between us, proving that this sprint is a lot more surprising than usual and every second is worth mentioning.

Starting early, we caught up with some fresh air and energetic brisk jog, followed by a swim on the beach to flush out the toxins and loosen up all our muscles, which was really a great start to the day.

After a quick breakfast, we all headed up to the conference room. Firstly each member of the crew introduced themselves to break the ice between them, as getting to know each other is very important for group cohesion and also it will be easier for people to cooperate well in the session. As we all entered one by one, Vinay made us all contribute something to the open board sketching, which ended up being a wonderful portrait that satisfied our whole hearts. Continued with small introduction.

Arjun then reviewed the agenda and welcomed everyone to the meeting. He started his talk by reviewing 2022 to let everyone know what happened in Avni last year.

Thereafter the knowledge exchange session of client NGOs has started. Ravindra Kurbude from Jan Swasthya Sahyog (a voluntary, not-for-profit organization working in rural Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh) was the first person to start this session. JSS aims to reduce the prevalent inequity in health by providing low-cost provision and effective health care services at the primary and secondary levels. JSS uses Avni for field users for programs like

Chronic disease care (users here are senior health workers)
Maternal and Child Health (users are MCH workers)
Pulwari Scheme (Users Pulwari Supervisors)

Followed by Dr Abhay Nirgude from Yenepoya Medical college, Mangaluru. Abhay and other faculty members from his department, along with Samanvay, developed a comprehensive Digital Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) with a non-monetary grant from Tech4Dev, USA. As there was a lot of pen and paper based data collection, Avni assisted them digitize the data that needed to be taken in real time. Also, there are times when data needs to be captured time and time again from the same entity for detailed survilance, Avni here stepped in with smooth visit schedules and decision support.

Then, we lend our ears to Madhuri Dhariwal from Indus Action, whose mission is to eradicate poverty among people and help them be resilient, especially when there are shocks like economic crises, covid, lockdown etc.

As it was almost 1:45pm, we all went for a 40 minute lunch break.

Post lunch, Vinay started his feature list orientation where everyone was eager to know more about our product and its capability. Drafts, Question group form element, Documentation, Timer, Customizable menus, repeating questions group, colorful form elements group, Security changes, Middle Name, Unique field validation, Direct Assignment, registration based attribute, Auto Sync were some of the features discussed in this session. NGOs found this session very helpful as they got to know what they wanted.

We then had a quick talk from two of our client NGOs, Dr. Pankaj Mahure from Institute of Health Management (IHMP) and Dr Dhiren Modi from SEWA Rural who runs several community health programs.

After a short break in between, with various snacks brought by our fellow NGOs from different parts of the country, we rushed back to the conference hall to finish the next two talks as it was already a time for sunset.

Vijaya took the next session on Leadership for Equity (LFE), which aims to strengthen the public school ecosystem and seeks to develop low-cost, effective and replicable programs that can be scaled within government systems. With the help of Avni app, dashboard and chatbot, they can review how teachers' professional development has changed and how other teacher support structures have been implemented as part of the SALT (Supporting Andhra's Learning Transformstion) programme. For this, the TEACH app was deployed and roughly 7500 observers (school HMs and CRPs) were onboarded in the data collection application (from Avni) of classroom observations across the state.

Followed by a session with Hiralchandra Maru from ATE Chandra Foundation whose work is majorly contributed to

Social Sector Capacity Building
Sustainable Rural Development

on which Rejuvenation of Waterbodies is one of their focuses. Avni is used in thier project to monitor the progress of the project and record important data like number of farmers carting silt, number of waterbodies, total silt carted and usage of silt.

And with this our conference talks came to an end. We all went to the beach to watch the sunset. On the way to the beach, Avni team quickly rehearsed penguin dance, which ended up being very funny and cute.

At the end of the day we were very happy for everything that happened.

This promises to be a very fun moment of Avni, and you’re welcome to join us to follow and start running all the action. Vamos Avni!

Avni Conference, Goa, January 2023 - Day 4

Read the other day blogs