WARNING: a very dull post meant for the Milk Run volunteers!! Proceed with caution – this post may put you to sleep!
The Milk Run recipients are registered and the baby receives milk formula usually until it’s 1st birthday. We are still using the card registration system that evolved over the 27 years of the Milk Run program and while very powerful at preventing abuse and keeping track of attendance, this system does require some regular maintenance. This post is about how to take care of the card registration system.
Registration cards live in 3 separate boxes: 1 for the office supplies (blue handle) and 1 box each for the recipients from Rang Moo and Suan Ooy communities. Every 2 weeks, as we register new moms and have their pictures taken, we update the cards…We do 1 community at a time, first step: is to add the new photos to the cards. The photos should be taken from some distance so they can be cut to fit in the top-left corner of a registration card. A photo should clearly show faces of both mom and the baby.Once the photos are attached to the corresponding cards, second step: is to create enough new registration cards so we can add more moms that will come for the first time. The new registration cards are saved in small photo albums marked with “*1st” and “*2nd” – Rang Moo and Suan Ooy. New cards should be numbered using the numbers that are not used in the current stack of registration cards. To create more blank registration cards, the third step: is to make more photocopies of registration form, cut them into individual size and… … glue them to index cards we purchase at B2S or another office supply store. Finally, each new registration card should also have a corresponding small card that a mother will get to carry and show us when they come to collect milk formula. We create these small cards by cutting the index card in 4 equal pieces.
The admin work can be done every two weeks or once a month. It only takes an hour of loving kindness and desire to show these moms that someone cares that the cards and pics look good, that the old, beat up cards are replaced if needed and the whole system is kept free of clutter and with plenty of pens, staples, paper glue and index cards. The rubber stamps we use need minimal care – we add more stamp ink only once or twice a year.
Ideally, we rotate the Milk Run admins every 3 to 6 months so no one feels stuck with this work. As an alternative, admin group can be (and has been done many times) as a morning group activity. Thank you for making it through this post! 🙂
One Reply to “Milk Run admin work”
Great Instructions! Everything is very clear and extremely helpful, and a good record for new Volunteers.
Cheers Yvonne
Great Instructions! Everything is very clear and extremely helpful, and a good record for new Volunteers.
Cheers Yvonne