Orphanage management system

Abstract : Orphanage is the name to describe a residential place dedicated for orphans whose parents are dead. Parent and grandparent are legally responsible for taking up the responsibility of taking care of their grandchildren, but in case both parents and grandparents, or other relations willing to take up the responsibility of the children, they lose all protection. Orphanages [1][2] provide them another way to foster care of the orphans in a society setting in which they live and learn. We proposed an orphanage home management information system that will change the manual work (paper work) management to a (digitized) computerized management system. This will ease information attainment, storage and recovery using Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) programming language was used for user interface design and it make available the necessary features in accomplishing the aims of the system. In addition, this research was conducted in Ghana (West Africa).In Kilifi North Sub- county, there are more than 40 charitable organizations which have put in place children homes and orphanages to help accommodate homeless children and orphans. These children are homeless due to HIV/AIDs or poverty and family matters. In 2003, there was an estimate of over 13 million orphans due to AIDs in Sub-Saharan Africa. (UNICEF, UNAIDS and USAID, 2004) Daily activities which happen include: sports, learning, guiding and counseling, visits by donors, volunteer sor well-wishers, and other institutions or organizations. In a typical orphanage ,records are usually kept for future reference, retrieval, reproduction, and easy management. The daily activities, schedules and events are also recorded. For instance, if there is need to know the population of the orphanage/ children home, one may need to count the records obtained from different files that contain papers with information. The main objective of this project was to design and develop a new system of managing information in these orphanages. The system helps the clerk in reducing paperwork and enhance tidiness in record keeping since the existing one uses manual keeping i.e. use of files and papers. It also reduces costs incurred in purchasing files and papers for individual entities. The system manages records of children, guardians/caretakers, donors, sponsors, volunteers, adoptive-parents and adoption. The system allows the user to add, modify, delete and print the entry records. It also provides tracking the progress for children that have been adopted from these orphanages, which other systems don’t do. The study examined various aspects of objectives and analyzed them and related to the literature and data which was collected using interviews, questionnaires and observation. It focused on both qualitative and quantitative approach as the methodology. This is because the research is aimed to obtain nonbiased data from various respondents using both numerical figures and non-numerical ones such as feelings and emotions.

 EXISTING SYSTEM :

 Existing Systems consists of only the orphanages details such as, address contact numbers etc. It does not have any centralized and separate website for orphanages.

 DISADVANTAGE :

 In existing system people can view only the address of the particular orphanages which are searched by the users. In that people cannot do any donation or sponsorships. This is the main drawback of the existing system. And also this is the main disadvantage of the orphanages those who are in need of getting help from others .The above systems had various weaknesses that could pose disadvantages to the users and the orphanage institutions as well. It was time consuming. For the case of a manual system, the following were the problems experienced while using it: loss of a file or register meant that data was completely lost since there was no backup, duplication of entries due to misplacement of records, data stored in the filing cabinets can fall in wrong hands and modified, Space occupied by registers and files kept in the filing cabinets, unreliable since records were handwritten and errors might occur, slow rate of data retrieval and it is costly to purchase papers and files for a bigger population. While using Microsoft access to manage orphan records, the following challenges were poised: all the information from the database is stored in one file, it is limited for small for small to medium organizations, it is difficult to publish files apart from static files, power outage affects the operations, requires internet and subscription for Office 365account if there is need for cloud storage and backup of data.

 PROPOSED SYSTEM :

 The proposed system (design) will be used by the staffs of the orphanage homes to save the important details of orphaned children. Guided by the concept the system is designed particularly for orphanage homes and it is a stand alone system(s). The scope comprises of the user(s) and function(s) that’s involved in the system. The system does not cover the financial of the orphanage home.By selecting the particular category they can reach their required page. In the donation category they can donate food, clothes and money the particular orphanage they wish. In adoption category they will get list of orphans and their details of different orphanages. In case for admin login whole pattern will be different. Whenever new orphan is admitted they can enroll the details of that child in this portal. And if there is any shortage of food, cloth or money they can give a notification to the registered user’s phone numbers. Each person who login into the application has to undergo authentication with their phone number and they will become a member of this application and they will be given a unique ID which reduces chaos. So whenever admin puts a notification of need will be reflected as a notification to the donor’s side. And in our application we have planned to display list of orphanage region wise.

 ADVANTAGE :

 The proposed system of receiving data from the orphan is more effective and dependable. This is so since the system collects the exact information regarding every orphan registered on the system, the modern system or computerized system of receiving data will keep records for a very long period of time and also the record can be searched, updated and saved in the database. With the proposed system, the problem of not having the appropriate information about an orphan will be minimal, unlike in the old paper system of collecting data. This is so because every orphan will have all the necessary data attached with his/her contact address, so as to make it easier for the orphanage home to know what kind of assistance to give him/her or to locate in case of any unforeseen exigence. The new system provides identification number and their records are written and saved successfully in the database, such that one can easily print the hard copy of his profile. ? Easy to finding the orphanages. ? Easy to resolve the problem with in the span of time to given donation to the needy people.