DIRECTOR'S NOTE

This first outreach mission, so different from previous donations made by private individuals to specific individual beneficiaries via our Hurricane Melissa Amazon Registry then delivered by volunteers, was executed personally to establish field operational standards and data collection methods. To ensure that 100% of the quality, detail, and dignity in customer service with community members met my standards, I managed the last-mile delivery logistics - from the data architecture to the dangerous mountain drives - of donations distribution solo, leveraging modern technology and my career background in business intelligence and supply chain management.  

What does this mean in terms of what value-add I brought to the mission by being in the field personally?

1. Agile Supply Chain: unlike 'one-size-fits-all' relief missions that hand out the same thing to everyone, I practiced Just-In-Time supply chain management with limited supplies by first capturing the data of the next household in line, then packing according to the data [and the answer in real time to the question of whether anyone in the household still menstruates].  By handing out only relevant donations to each and every household, I ensured the CMI Media Group donation stretched for the maximum households possible, not just the first ones that happened to see me sitting outside Point Hardware in the square on the back of my hatchback with my laptop on the table! You'll see what I mean in the video footage.  The student who gave her video testimonial the very next day after her first use of the donated supplies was the first to notice this approach from day 1 - before she even received anything - and complimented me on being "very organized".  People want to be treated fairly and with dignity even when they are in need, and I made sure to do that while ensuring it was not a free-for-all.

2. Data-Driven Distribution: my inner BI nerd was not left at the office! I mapped geographic locations and vulnerability markers on the fly, as well as the priority needs details, ensuring the most at-risk households were given a voice and given visibility through what the data tells us, not just my opinion.  Plus: I love transforming data into interesting and useful information - finding out what the data tells me and seeing where the data takes me, for me this is the fun part!

3. AI-Driven Efficiency: by personally handling the logistics, packaging, and distribution, powered by AI-driven data structure and contingency plans for government bottlenecks before they happened (and boy, did they happen!), I eliminated the variability in timing and delivery caused by "middlemen", not to mention the time-consumption and administrative management required for volunteer recruitment on short notice. This level of efficiency was powered by Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT. I can't yet decide who would win in a Gemini vs ChatGPT AI fight, but I tend to ask both AIs the exact same prompts to neutralize programming bias and capture anything I haven't thought of already that one captures but the other missed - and that ensures we the people still win!

4. Geocoding Enhancement: you might be wondering - if the donations were mostly distributed in the square, how did Project Pickney Power figure out where people live?  How do we find a beneficiary again and get a donation directly to them if we want to help with a specific need?

While this rural area would prove Mission: Impossible for the typical standardized charity form to capture this level of household detail if a traditional street address is not available, Project Pickney Power was prepared to work around this issue.  

I created geolocation insight at the household level by starting from ground zero in the town square and asking each household representative, as it became their turn in line, to point in the direction they live from Point Hardware, then used my smartphone to zoom in and around on Google Maps based on the simultaneous ongoing verbal description of how far down, how far in from the nearest street, what major landmark such as house(s) in front of theirs, shop, church or school, the beneficiaries lived, and was then able to drop a pin and pull up the Google Plus Code for the building shown on the satellite imagery in that location (or at least where it used to be if the home was destroyed by Hurricane Melissa, because satellite imagery would still show the beneficiary's home where they describe it to be). 

This means if you want to help a specific beneficiary, Project Pickney Power will be able to deliver your help directly to them at their home, because we captured the data beyond just their phone number that lets us now know where to find those we were able to help for follow-up if they consented to being contacted further (which is their right to consent or decline further contact and which was also captured in the data).  However, no one was turned away nor denied receiving a donation because they did not wish further contact.

5. Scaleable Template: now any number of volunteers can be trained to collect the same basic data (minus the geocoding enhancement which is a unique feature of my presence in the field) without knowing how to use a spreadsheet and without exposure to existing raw data (e.g. via a simple Google Form).  Then I can analyze the mission data when the last delivery has been made and, within a week or two depending on data complexity and integrity, turn it into a mission page with dashboard just like this one!

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you take away nothing else from my efforts, it is this:

Things don't have to be perfect for you to help - just start somewhere and do something!  That's the bottom line behind my starting this charity and that is how it's being run.

-Michelle Bajraktarević | Executive Director, Project Pickney Power

meet the community of point

(Limited to beneficiaries who consented to being photographed or videoed)