Maventy Health International Team

Dan Frankowski
 

As online volunteer for Maventy Health International, Dan Frankowski led the development of the world’s first online and mobile tool that allows the monitoring and assessment of children’s growth and malnutrition based on WHO standards. The organization is currently using the tool in rural Northern Madagascar, where it is working to reduce early childhood mortality.

“Starting as a pilot project from zero, Dan has played an intricate role of making the impossible possible. While the tool is simple, in the background runs a very sophisticated statistical/computational analysis with extremely precise results. Every week, Dan provided hours of work toward the project, week after week, month after month for over 19 months. From designing the database, developing the platform and core coding to working with WHO in Geneva and guiding various volunteer programmers across the globe, he has put together a software which is now starting to change lives of many children in Madagascar”, says Dr. Malachovsky, who manages the organization’s online volunteers.

The database, which represents a volunteer contribution to Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 worth more than $100,000, is available online and through any mobile phone with Internet access and can be used by anyone free of charge. It facilitates the monitoring of growth and malnutrition of children under the age of 5, thereby enabling early intervention to reduce its effects on child development. As Maventy’s pilot project has demonstrated early success, the Ministry of Health in Madagascar has expressed interest in using the system to track children’s growth across the country.

Dan Frankowski, U.S.A.: “It is difficult to estimate how much time I spent on this assignment. Software requires hours of concentration to get moving, so you cannot do it in 1 hour chunks. Thus, I devote bursts of time. I will go without any effort for a month if I am busy, then spend an entire weekend at it. Wild guesses: 10 hours per week and a total of 1,000 hours. If your life is good, you are lucky, and you probably owe a debt to many people you have never even heard of. I have a chance to use my skills to try to make a real difference for malnourished children. That is something to aspire to.”