Graduate assistants Chris Bruszewski and Adam Harrington have been working 20 to 30 hours a week to help Muncie's Meals on Wheels update their nearly 15-year-old computer system.
Located in the basement of Ball Memorial Hospital, the organization delivers meals to people who are unable to provide food for themselves because of age, illness, disability or during recovery after being released from a hospital.
"The system they were using was really old," Harrington said in a press release. "They were using an old dial-up modem, which meant that when they were using the computers they couldn't talk to their clients. This was a problem because the phone rang constantly."
The old software was inefficient, and volunteers had to execute the same tasks multiple times, Bruszewski said. The new system has more options and will bring up information for individual clients, which saves the volunteers time.
"Hopefully this new software system makes the office work run more smoothly so that the staff can direct more of their attention to their clients instead of struggling with an old program," Bruszewski said in a press release.
Meals on Wheels is in the final stage of crossing over to the new software, Bruszewski said. He and Harrington are training volunteers to use the new system and transfer information from the old one. The organization will completely switch March 1.
The new system that Harrington and Bruszewski, graduate assistants for the Center for Information and Communication Sciences, installed was purchased through a $3,000 grant from Mutual Federal Savings Bank Charitable Foundation Inc.
The grant was provided after a joint research effort by Meals on Wheels, CICS and Community Tech Link, a United Way program that provides technology for nonprofit groups in Delaware County.
The three groups began researching types of software for Meals on Wheels last year and submitted the grant proposal during the Fall 2004 semester, Bruszewski said.
After the proposal was approved in October, Bruszewski said he and Harrington helped decide what products and software would work best for Meals on Wheels and started installing them at the beginning of the Spring semester.
"This is a great example of how area organizations can work together to bring their expertise into solving a problem," Richard Bellaver, director of CICS and president of the Meals on Wheels board of directors, said in a press release.
Susan Thomas, executive director of Meals on Wheels, said she is excited about the transformation.
"This is going to be a change from night to day," Thomas said. "We couldn't have done this without the help of the CICS program, they have really been great."
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