Volunteerism fills in many gaps in our society today with volunteers rendering services to often forgotten segments of communities that needed not just the care but also the guidance and support.
Hasna al Salti is one of those people who love volunteering having found the passion when she first volunteered in 2013 through her organisation specialising in serving orphans, struggling families and people with disabilities.
While other volunteers focus more on the nurturing side of this programme, Hasna focused more on her academic specialisation wherein as a software developer, she helps different organisations by developing a system that manages the data of these organisations.
Hasna has been instrumental in the creation of the data managing system called ORFAN. Through this system, data is accessed and controlled electronically and quickly.
Hasna worked on it for a while during her studies at the university, and this was the first time she worked on an integrated system. She used a new programming language that she had previously studied at the university, where she learned it individually. It took her too long to programme and design this system.
The random collection of data in these volunteer teams motivated Hasna to programme an organised, well-designed database. This randomness of data resulted on multiple mistakes, so, the idea of converting data into a database was necessary to speed up the pace of work and keep the data secured.
“This system is made by personal diligence and self-learning. But it was with the help of the academic staff at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences in Sur and the cooperation of the professors of the Information Technology Department that she could continue the programme”, she says.
The assistant professors encouraged Hasna to continue working on her dream and develop it, yet, they had great credit for developing and implementing this system with her.
She chose to create this system because volunteer work is her own world in which she finds herself. She believes that it is necessary to harness the specialisation she is studying for the service of volunteer work. Hasna looks forward and hopes that there will be a clear database for all volunteer teams in Oman, through which they organise their work and avoid randomness and ensure that aids reach their beneficiaries without missing anyone. she seeks to develop it better and turn it into an online platform that can be accessed from all devices at any time.
She is also currently seeking to make her program the first approved system for all volunteer teams in the Sultanate of Oman. She is also looking to reach outside the Sultanate of Oman or even help those who wish to develop a similar system to manage the data of volunteer teams around the world.
