Ethan Ratnofsky, a senior computer science major at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, is a member of one of his school’s largest computer science organizations, Change++. One of the organization’s goals is to prepare Vanderbilt students with as much real-life experience as possible by linking members of the organization to work with nonprofits.
In October, Ratnofsky and a small team of coders began working with Her Future Coalition, a nonprofit that provides benefits, education, jobs and mental health resources to women who have fallen victim to human trafficking in India and Nepal.
“I think it’s really cool how Her Future Coalition tackles women’s empowerment for women facing gender-based violence from a plethora of different angles,” said Emily Chang, the team’s product manager. “They understand that the needs of every individual girl are very holistic and so the services they provide are very intentional to meet those needs.”
Despite the nonprofit’s success, its social workers and staff rely on thousands of physical papers to track the progress of these survivors, and many of these papers, Ratnofsky said, are scattered in filing cabinets.
“Handling all that data was just a pain,” Ratnofsky said in reference to the physical documents he and his team worked with.
To fix this problem, Ratnofsky and his team have been building a web-based application that digitizes their paperwork in order to help the nonprofit be more efficient.
The app will allow staff members to look up each survivor’s progress online instead of sifting through hundreds of papers, Ratnofsky said.
As an engineering manager for his team, Ratnofsky is in charge of how the data is stored, how users interact with the data and providing his developers with the tools they need to create the web-based application. He’s also in charge of communicating with Amanda Cunningham, the chief operating officer of Her Future Coalition, about what their application needs.
“I think a long-term benefit of this is that we can track data and that we can track the healing process and the progression of the beneficiaries in our programs,” Cunningham said.
The nonprofit COO believes that the work from Change++ will also help them understand what is working and where areas of improvement are needed at Her Future Coalition.
“Change++ is actually going to make it possible that the information we put into [the application] can turn into data and then show that data as progress,” Cunningham said.
One specific feature that the team is currently working on is for the Her Future Coalition staff to collect information on the survivor’s mental health, education, social skills and career skills.
“This feature was requested in order for staff members and social workers to monitor the progress of their beneficiaries as well as the success of their own programs so they can further improve and expand their resources,” Ratnofsky said.
Ratnofsky plans to have the app finished for the nonprofit to review by May when he graduates. Once he hands it over to Cunningham, he hopes the Her Future Coalition can find someone who can maintain the app and protect its sensitive data.
“A lot of our beneficiaries are victims of abuse,” said Kai Dubauska, one of the developers on the team. “So some of that information may be recorded on their notes or on their profiles. It’s really important that their information stays protected and secure.”
Overall Ratnofsky and his team believe they’ve done great work developing their web-based application.
“You know, we produced a really cool application so far,” Ratnofsky said.
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