We recently finished a project that will have broad impact on the effectiveness of the ministry of Youth Venture. This project was called Project Genesys. Project Genesys was an initiative to provide Youth Venture with an advanced and customized youth tracking system. The aim of the project was to create an easy to use, data driven system that tracks visits and provides regular analytics on all Youth Venture members. For years we have been working on developing or buying a system that could meet all of the needs listed above. Finally one of our long-time YV volunteers Matt Miller, was able to organize a team of volunteers including Austen Payan, Alex Carr, Martha Waugh, and Randin Lambrecht to develop a custom system for the centers to use. This year the system was finally ready to be implemented in the centers, and was named Visit.
In our day-to-day operations, Visit acts as a check-in system for all the centers. When a new member enters a center, a leader adds their basic information to the system while also capturing a picture of the new member. This creates a personal profile for that member. From that point, every time they visit the center they will be checked in to the center using their profile, the staff will see a picture of the kid with their name and basic information, and their visit will be recorded in their visit history.
Though the core of Visit is for check-ins, there are many other functions it plays on a daily basis. The software tracks all lessons, ministry involvement, and event attendance. Also it acts as a communication log between shift leaders and the directors, and tracks the discipline history of the kid. When a kid is under discipline at the center, a notification will pop up if they try to check-in, and there is an area for leaders to leave notes for other leaders and the director. All of this information is stored on a centralized database between all of the centers.
Visit fills several very important needs at Youth Venture. It provides an easy to use and comprehensive system to track all of the information for the students who attend the centers. Also, it supports the shift leaders by giving them an easy way to access this information and communicate with other leaders. Through this system, we are given another valuable tool to help measure the impact of Youth Venture in individual kids lives and the overall effectiveness of the ministry of Youth Venture.
We are very grateful to Matt Miller and the team of volunteers he organized to tackle this project. The hours of labor an expertise they put into the project created a value far beyond what we would have been able to afford, and they have succeeded in creating an excellent system for Youth Venture. We are very excited about how this system will help to improve the ministry of Youth Venture and especially our communication of the effectiveness of this ministry with you.