Sunsar Maya Uses Kintone to Track and Report Progress of At-Risk Children in Nepal

Turning qualitative statistics to quantitative measures, Jehan Seirafi uses Kintone to keep track of vital data to raise funding for at-risk children in Nepal.

Jehan is the Executive Director of Sunsar Maya, a non-profit organization she co-founded that provides educational opportunities to improve the lives of Nepali vulnerable children.

Having spent time living and working with at-risk children in Nepal, Jehan recognized the need for children to have more than just an academic day at school. She and her founders created a curriculum rich in sensory play and social-emotional learning — two critical areas that many institutional programs do not provide. With a focus on more qualitative social and developmental factors, Jehan faced difficulties in tracking the children’s progress into something that was quantifiable.

“We have all these different aspects of the program—the medical and physical, the emotional, and the academic,” she explained. “It started to become really daunting, ‘How do we measure the kids’ progress over time? How do we measure it as a whole group? How do we measure it by age and classes? How do we identify individual kids’ needs and see where they’re falling behind?”

Moving Away From Traditional Databases

The amount of data for each child continued to mount and the team needed to tie it all together. Yet the traditional database lacked the customizability that Kintone offered.

“Our data is so different,” Jehan said. “You’re talking about emotional growth versus health records. It’s so different that a traditional database just doesn’t work for us.” Jehan and her team turned to Kintone after frustrating experiences with Excel spreadsheets.

Now, not only is the data more manageable and customizable within the Kintone database management platform, but Jehan is transforming the data into visuals and graphs to place into annual reports for showcasing donors.

It’s been pretty life changing for our organization to be able to see our data as a whole and to be able to use it instantly.

“It’s been pretty life changing for our organization to be able to see our data as a whole and to be able to use it instantly,” she said.

As a small non-profit organization, Sunsar Maya’s staff runs thin in operations but are still held to administrative responsibilities, such as reporting to their funders. “This time last year, when I was doing our annual report and looking from spreadsheet to spreadsheet, trying to put together numbers, I wanted to pull my hair out. There’s always room for a lot of mistakes that way. But not with a solution like Kintone.”

The organization is constantly striving to uphold their mission in providing children with the best services available. “To find something like Kintone that allows us to see our progress, and identify needs in such a robust way without the cost of some of these crazy installations has been incredible for our organization to be able to do that.”