In our community, we have recently started an initiative to procure the needed vegetables & fruits directly from the farmers and distribute them ourselves.
Once a week, we collect the vegetable & fruit requirements from interested individuals from our community, consolidate the required quantity by Thursday evening, and place the order for the same to the farmers.
On Saturday early morning, The placed order will arrive from the farmers. We gather in a place and divide & distribute the items received.
The individuals will transfer the respective amount to a volunteer based on the items received. This volunteer will, in turn, consolidate the whole amount from everyone and send the money to the farmers.
The cycle continues!
Everything is volunteer-driven, and our objective is to use fresh organic fruits & vegetables directly from the farmer at a rate that is win-win for both the farmers and the individuals of the community.
Reconciliation: Most of the time, the quantities of the order we place and the ones we receive don't match. (We can't predict nature and the harvest). So, while distributing, we have to track how much each has ordered and how much they have received.
Money Collection: Though everyone pays without fail, due to human tendency, they pay at different times within the next few days after they get the items. The volunteer who does this part has to spend a decent of time managing this.
We drive through an excel sheet and some manual calculations on the printout of that sheet.
Most tutorials focus on "how" and polished requirements for solutions. In the real world, that's 50%. The remaining 50% is on the "why" & "how" (product thinking, prioritization, thinking like an end user, saying NO, lean thinking, figuring out what matters and what doesn't). I am getting behind the scenes and covering all these aspects through live coding
- The live coding videos is available in Learn CS in Tamil website
- The source code is available in GitHub
I don't have any idea to monetize this. I love building products, and it's a pressing problem for us. I am trying to solve this for our community. I may open it up for other communities if it turns out well.
👍 Good Initiative