A MashUp software application developed by two students from the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka is selected by the Microsoft Imagine Cup student competition as one of the six finalists to compete at the world competition to be held in Cairo, Egypt from 3rd to 8th July 2009.
This application is developed in accordance with the Microsoft Imagine Cup theme of "Imagine a world where technology helps to solve the toughest problems facing us today” and the University of Moratuwa students, Supunmali Ahangama and Dasuni Kannangara have chosen poverty alleviation through women empowerment in their application.
Through Microfinance, unemployed women can be helped to generate an additional income to the family by involving themselves in home-based ventures. With the credit facilities given, they can initiate small scale businesses of producing various items for sale. However, supplying these women with credit facilities alone is not adequate to empower them as they will be confronted with problems of selling their products and also fulfilling loan liabilities on time without getting blacklisted. It will be more effective, if these women could be helped in finding potential buyers for their products. Having a system whereby these women could be informed of due dates of loan settlements etc. will facilitate smooth functioning of the microfinance setup. Another problem faced by many such organizations is the difficulty in uniform distribution of available aids to the deserving women whenever such aids are received. Going from house to house in search of defaulters daily is another daunting task for the staff of microfinance institutes.
The MashUp application “Hope for poor - Sasrutha” developed by University of Moratuwa students will assist both parties involved; microfinance institutes and the women to be empowered, in all these endeavours. The main features of this MashUp are as follows.
1. Locating deserving women in aid distribution
2. Indication of the shortest path connecting debtors who are supposed to pay instalments each day( this will assist field officers in their collection trips)
3. Locating the defaulters and finding the reasons behind the defaults.
4. Checking on all the relevant details of clients as and when it is needed. As the information is shown graphically, it enables the staff to analyze effective loan to saving ratios.
5. Researchers and NGOs too will find this MashUp application helpful in their operations.
6. Most importantly, this MashUp “Hope for poor - Sasrutha” will support different languages based on the user preference.
The Faculty of Information Technology, is the first ever faculty of this kind in the Sri Lanka state university system, was established in June 2001.
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