1.
Growing Together
Software development in the developing world
Patrick Birchall
Platform Engineer

2.
● 20+ years of tricking
computers into working.
● 6 years doing so
professionally.
● Other skills including but
not limited to:
○ Music
○ Nope, just music.
Expectation
Reality

3.
Background
● Equal Experts reached out
to VSO in early 2018.
● Growing Together was
selected for the
information challenges it
presented.
● Volunteers were selected
and began preparing to
travel in late 2018.

4.
VSO Knowledge Exchange
● Knowledge Exchange is VSO’s corporate volunteering
program.
● Pairs expert practitioners with challenges they may not see
day-to-day.
● Partners provide expertise to VSO and their projects free
of charge.

5.
Growing Together
● Founded in 2014 as a joint venture between VSO and
Syngenta.
● Initially aimed to improve the livelihoods of 10,000
farmers.
○ Hoping to engage with 30,000 farmers by the end of
2019.

6.
Growing Together Structure
● Joikko, a for-profit social enterprise that
owns the Farmer Centre franchise.
● Farmer Centres, ran by a single
entrepreneur who brings together
financial, educational and technical
services.
● Agri-Entrepreneurs, members of the
community who work with the Farm
Centres to take the services out into the
community.
● Farmer Groups, communities of farmers
working together.

7.
The Challenges
● Low quality data
○ Incomplete entries
○ Errors in transliteration, e.g.
Horekrisnopur/Horekrishnopur.
● Data stored in a single 30k+ line Excel document.
○ Difficult to navigate.
○ Challenging to keep distributed copies in sync.

8.
The Challenges
● Local infrastructure is less than ideal
○ Many families in this area lack an internationally
recognised address.
● Very few people have access to a smart device or the
internet.

9.
The Solution - Objectives
● Allow new data to be
added with ease.
● Always be up to date.
● Show information ‘at a
glance’.

10.
Inception to Production in three
weeks
-or-
How to exploit time differences
to work 17 hour days

11.
The importance of planning
● Tickets outline everything that needs doing.
● Columns track the state of tickets.
● Allows everyone to keep up to date with progress.

12.
The Solution - Application
● Node.JS
○ React-google-maps
○ Mongoose
○ Express
● MongoDB
○ NoSQL Document Store

13.
Sample Code

14.
The Solution - Infrastructure

15.
Sample Code

16.
Ta-da!

17.
Initial Feedback
● Joikko are now able to decide locations for new
Farm Centres more easily.
● Farm Centres can accurately forecast the
required number of Agri-Entrepreneurs.
● Agri-Entrepreneurs can see their assigned
Farmer Groups and receive navigational
assistance from Google Maps.

18.
But wait, there’s more...

19.
What’s next?
● VSO are huge fans of our approach to
engagements and are keen for many more
teams to participate in knowledge exchange.
● Interest from other organisations in the
development sector such as DFID.

20.
Q&A

21.
Thank YouThank You
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