We have received a donation. I went along with a co worker and picked it up today (Friday). I went and looked at the donation on Wednesday. Gathered all the information about it. Checked the value of it and it's accessory as it will be sold to assist in funding our TechACCESS project. Found this donation to be in great condition fully functional and easy to use. Called the individual who handled all the required maintenance and received an excellent report from him. As well as care instruction to pass along to whomever purchases this item. Contacted the state authorities as to how to handle the transfer of ownership esp since we are not going to use it ourselves but rather sell it.....By now your asking what we have received.

We have had donated to us 1 Dodge Grand Caravan Stretched (and lowered) accessible van. It has a kneel on it...which means with the push of a button it just about lays on the ground so the ramp folds out and entering the van is made easier. It can be used with the kneel feature either on or off for entering the van. It also has other accessible features. It came with a new electric wheel chair so that whomever purchases it will be able to anchor the chair into the front passenger side and ride as the passenger or if able to drive they can transfer to the driver seat. There is possibly if it wasn't removed another anchor under the driver seat if the user is able to drive but it may not be compatible depending on what wheelchair the driver needs or it may have been removed. Since I lacked the proper tools to pull the driver seat out at the time this is in need of confirmation.

I have experience with accessible vans as my grandmother has always had them since I was a small child. I've driven a couple of them when she has needed help (which wasn't often) and always been taught how to use the ramps or lifts when she decided she preferred a lift. This one can easily be suited for a new owner if they are required to do anything at all to it (most vans are custom built to the individuals needs however if they have not required to drastic an amount of customizing they can easily be resold for a different user). Since the main thing is that the van and wheelchair be compatible with each other the donation of the chair the van was built for along with the van is great. It will make it much easier for potential new owners to see if the van is a good match for them and their needs. Luckily for us this van received a minimal amount of customizing.

Pics of it are here if anyone wants to see.

Comment from Kevin Palmer on August 13, 2007 - 10:47am

Nice van for a donation. Plus it comes with a compatible chair. That's amazing. Have you had any luck finding construction donations (dry wall, lumber, etc.)? I know you were trying to get Lowes or Home Depot to deliver on some in-kind donations for rebuilding/upgrading the facilities at YES.

Also, I mentioned this to Pat in an email but I was planning on coming out to Orange next week sometime and see how everything at YES is going. Does next week work/what day?

Comment from Rayna Ramirez on August 13, 2007 - 12:47pm

Next week would be fine. If you want to give me a call we can coordinate schedules.......that still sounds strange to me lol. Not used to having to schedule meetings and such yet.

I will be contacting Lowes about the donations of building supplies. My supervisor and I are working on a presentation for them. We qualify for their assistance program they offer so the first step is forming a list of exact needs and meeting with the store manager for our area.

At least that was what we were going to entitle our volunteer alert. Thought better of it at second glance. The Director of Teaming for Technology and I attended the John Mayer concert on Tue. night at our area's big amphitheatre to work a concession/vendor stand as a fundraising project. There was quite a process to be invitied, to host a stand, get certified to sell alcohol, etc. etc.--it took the better part of a month. We showed up excited and left dejected. It was chaos and we ended up not only not making money but losing it. We will not be going back for round 2! However, a very positive aspect of the adventure was the public recognition our project received. It was a great networking opportunity and we were right in front of our core market that we need/want to reach. And since we were holding beer they wanted we had their undivided attention. We had people come back all night long to buy from us because we had made a connection with them about where their money was going. So, from a marketing/community outreach project it was a slam dunk. Money, not so much.

On the home front, I am struggling to find the happy medium between two bosses. One, my immediate supervisor, understands that this is a "people" business and relationship building and face time are of the highest importance when you're getting ready to ask somebody for something. Her superior, while very nice and very understanding, does not seem to grasp this aspect of the non-profit sector. Having spent 30 years in the for-profit world might have something to do with the disconnect. We use Volunteer Solutions as a volunteer agency/opportunity management tool here. It is essentially a dead tool--is not being used and has not been used for close to 2 years. It is my assignment to revitalize the volunteer outreach that Triangle United Way does directed through Volunteer Solutions. I delivered my first synopsis of work last week at a staff meeting, on the day that marked my completed first month of service, and had quite a bit to report. My comments were that while I thought Volunteer Solutions was entirely capable of doing what was being asked of it, since it had not been used in so long I was going to have to be essentially doing its job for at least 6 months. I relayed the information and reactions I had received in my recent site visits to our member organizations in the last few weeks--all of which had been negative. The highlights from my meetings were that the TUW is "big brother" and has very little understanding of its agencies. I had to report that, from what I saw, those perceptions were true and it was going to take a lot of 'bridge building' on my part to the program directors and volunteers to get them back in the habit/mindset of turning to TUW and Volunteer Solutions for their needs. It's an uphill march, but I stressed that it is one that I think is not only worthwile and capable of being reached--it is essential for the namesake of Triangle United Way. So, I have a big job but I am encouraged by the support of my superiors (my colleagues will get there eventually) and the people I've met at our agencies. This is apparently an issue that has been tossed around for a few years without a solution, so, to quote one of my bosses "we went and got you." It's ok to be both flattered and scared by that comment, right?

In this field report, I list the priorities I have accepted from my beneficiary organization, the challenges I currently see, and my accomplishments to date against the priorities.

Priorities

1. Recover the organization's ability to receive e-mail at its normal e-mail addresses. This seems to have broken in the process of moving the web site to a different hosting company.
2. Make sure two particular notebook computers can print over the office network, and that they have the latest updates of the operating systems and office software they are running. Investigate and resolve reported issues with documents being written on one computer and not being able to be edited on another (my work on the notebooks has to happen at the convenience of the computer owner/users).
3. Database issues, all aspects: We need the capability of multi-user simultaneous update of contacts list. Enlarge data schema to understand concept of who gets credit for recruiting another person to donate. Support ad hoc queries. In recommending a choice of contact management system and its underlying DBMS to support all the above, pay attention to ease of use. In particular, it must be possible to enter the data on forms rather than for example something so difficult as SQL.
4. Website: be able to post some documents for a limited audience to read (this should't be hard).
5. Simultaneous editing of documents by multiple coworkers, including not only content, but also control of style and navigation in web site.
6. Digital stories. Put all existing stories in a single master repository. Compile groups of them onto DVDs, with fancy DVD features and extras, for distribution to various audiences or in various types of event or circumstance. Study and report on any cost tradeoffs that would affect the judgement of whether for having a DVD "burner" in the office, we should buy a burner to hang off one of the existing computers (seems likely), or whether to get a computer with a burner in it (seems unlikely; why get a whole computer just for a peripheral? (especially given that office space is very tight)).

Challenges

• Seemingly random, intermittent, failures of access to Internet and to local shared file server, over the office network, from the notebook computers. The notebook computers and the office computers are all running Microsoft operating systems. In the most recent instances, rebooting the notebook computers seems to have corrected the failures. I advised one of the owners to keep the computer configured not to suspend itself to memory or disk (so long as it is plugged into the wall).

Accomplishments

• Made contact with the consultant who controls the web site (and presumably who can help me solve the e-mail issue).
• Configured the notebook computers so they could print on the office network. Started downloading and installing Microsoft updates on them and on the office computers. Advised the owner of one of the notebooks to contact Dell for a solution to inability to check the disk. Loaded OpenOffice.org on one of the office computers (thinking to gradually get it on all the workstations).
• Printed the web pages in triplicate to support review and revision of content of web site by three people (traversing the web site manually). Collated the copies by hand.

Comment from Morgan Sully on August 6, 2007 - 6:48pm

Hey Jack,
this looks great. I like this format for writing about what you are doing and needing.

I'm of course a big fan of CiviCRM for a database/CRM solution synced to MySQL accessed through nice forms (which you can configure - particularly if you are not a coder).

• You can create 'smart queries and save them to be accessed by other users later.
• Can create relations between records.
• It's 'relatively' easy to use, depending on which options you enable for which types of users.
• You administer your site though your browser and through the same interface as your end users.
• Has functionality for shared file uploading that can be permission based to limit who can have access to what.

.

Here is a demo:
http://demo.civicrm.org/drupal/ (also available for the Joomla CMS)

There are other options out there though I have not tried them and none of them (as far as I can tell) have as tight an integration with your website and content management as CiviCRM does.

Other options include:

http://www.organizersdb.org/

http://xrms.sourceforge.net/pagebuilder.php?s1=18

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/

http://www.vtiger.com/

nice that you went the 'old school' route too of actually PRINTING UP THE WEBPAGES for folks to go over. Makes for some nice PHYSICAL documentation.

m

The CTC VISTA site has hit over 1000 nodes! Momentous!

Here at Project HQ we're still working out some strategic planning, which will probably be a continuous process throughout the summer. Currently I'm working on a lot of new exciting projects and some other somewhat tedious ones.

The tedious business: documenting everything the CTC VISTA Project does from top to bottom, inside and out. The end result is going to be a Project Manual/Handbook that HQ can use and an edited version for distribution to current and all incoming VISTAs in the future.

The flip side to this text documentation is the fun part: an idea we're working on to create a kind of video manual of VISTA experience. In other words the Project will shoot interviews with VISTAs, profile host organizations, shoot some B-Roll and then send footage back to Project HQ to be edited. After it's all edited comes distribution, meaning a DVD marketing/outreach piece, a video for VISTA training/resources, dropping clips online, and other general outreach and training components. Check out The Plan: http://ctcvista.org/node/1008

Also to see what we're working on at HQ, check the 'Project HQ Initiatives' section on the wiki (http://ctcvista.org/node/1007). More will be added soon!

What else am I working on?
- VISTA Recruitment Plan
- Revised Host Organization Orientation plan
- Working with Danielle, UMass Boston's College of Public and Community Service to try and recruit some student interns.
- Making the work plans 'living' (i.e. easily altered online)
- Getting a Project HQ dog or maybe a wii

What ideas do you all have for making the Project serve you better?

Comment from Rebecca White on August 2, 2007 - 1:44am

haha! you're a chart nerd like Ben.

Hi All. I just spent some time going over this website and I love it. It seems easy to navigate. Well I am now 4 weeks into my work at the Academy for Career Development. I am helping implement support services to improve the delivery of human services programs development of labor sources by improving the access, maintenance, and communication aspects of education and technology programs for disabled and low income people.Cueently I a working on a powerppoint presentation to educate others on the importance of assistive technolgy for individuals to go back into the work force. There is so much out there that would help to make peoples lives easier. Not only at work but also in their private lives. I will keep you posted as to what we are working with.
Check out what we are about here at www.acdcareers.com

Comment from Kevin Palmer on July 27, 2007 - 1:20pm

Great to hear everything's working out so well for you over in Rochester with ACD. Accessibility is somewhat of a new priority area for the CTC VISTA Project. I definitely encourage you to post whatever you research or develop in the Accessibility portion of the Project wiki: http://ctcvista.org/access_inclusion

Also check out the work Rayna Ramirez is doing at the Young Entrepreneurs Society (YES) in Orange, MA. She's heavily into accessibility issues there. Here's a link to her most recent post: http://ctcvista.org/node/998

Last week as I sat and I wrote, I was so impressed by the new set up to go with my brand new second term and so I added the picture and wa-la everything went away. So here I am again going to bring you up on what's been happening with Renae.

Back in April a group of us went to conference in Baltimore hosted by NeighborWorks.

I was very impressed by the commitment of the kids. In Baltimore their kids are doing really innovative things. I heard poetry, skits, role playing and a lot of other things they were involved in. Their community was a very big deal to most of the teens who attended the conference and I came away with this wonderful feeling. Some of the things they said in the role play made me examine myself. One young man was the executive director of a center. He had asked one of the teens at his center to come to the board meeting, when the teen arrived he handed him the agendas to hand out. He asked him to greet people at the door, the adult was the child in this role play so the adult actually never became apart of the meeting because the adult (young man) kept coming up with different things for the child to do. I had to ask myself do we really listen to them when they speak, do we treat them as if they should be grateful for the attention we give them, or do we appreciate their since of style, the fresh way they look at things, their ability to move on after they have been disappointed yet again by an well meaning adult who after all thinks they don't really know what they want. We don't give them enough credit, and we don't give them a chance to use the tools we give them. I'm am blessed to be working with a group of kids who are intelligent, trustworthty, honest and creative.

They might be young but they are more reliable then some adults I know and they work just as hard as everyone else at our center to make it the great place it is. Hat's off to you Yasmine, Soncerae, Lisa, and the rest of the Youth leadership program for all you do!

Our trip to Baltimore also produced another eyeopener. After we went through the classes we had to come up with a project to bring back home that would represent Being the Bridge You Want to Build. We were so hipe about it we planned it at the airport. It is titled Neighbors Helping Neighbors. We came home and began working on it even though we had another event planned for a week before this one would kick off.

So guess what, the Celebration Of Your Gifts to Us was a success. (The one planned the week before.) We celebrated the partners we have made over the last year and we had food served by the hospitality committee (man can they cook!) and we gave away some pretty neat stuff, certificates, magnets these neat cups I created while in Home Depot looking for flowers for my garden. Yes, and she gardens when she can find the time.

Well anyway needless to say , it was a wonderful event.
Then one week later our Neighbors Helping Neighbors Week kicks off. We were suppose to have a jump castle, all kind of fun stuff for the kids and It rains. We're hoping for this great neighborhood turnout because we've partnered with the City of Charleston, Family Services, Lowcountry Housing and Trust and a host of others to bring to the people all this great information and prizes and it's pouring down rain. IT WAS GREAT! People still came out the, Mayor of Charleston proclaimed it National Neighborworks Week and off we started.

I have literally been on roller skates since then. ( I take that back, I never took off the roller skates! ha-ha.) We identified eight houses in the neighborhood that needed small construction jobs done to get them to the point that they could get effective weatherization offered by another group called The Sustainability Institute. The identification of the houses came from a partnership we made last year with The Lead Base Initiative with the City of Charleston. We have a group name Mission Fuge who did all the work on the houses for the last 6 weeks. We have seen so much community growth and community pride since we began our mission one year ago, Rev. King and I. Then guess what? Summer camp opened. Here we go again!

Well things here have started to calm down. At first everything was completely insane and the stress level was through the roof. My supervisor did some rearranging with the staff and things are now running smoothly..... so far. We've hired a new staff member as well to assist with the Biz Center. Now the clients are getting personal attention and we are hoping this brings in new clients. This will assist with the funds for my organization. Took some convincing but my supervisor listened and at last agreed.

Things accomplished since my last report are:

• TechACCESS workshop #1 while it had a small attendance was a great success.
• TechACCESS workshop #2 already has more than double the attendance and new people are still registering.
• Saving forms to assist my project staff in completing meeting minutes for various meetings and activities. They can just select the form and fill it in and save it with the meeting title so the original form may be used over and over.
• Completion and distribution of workshop #1 minutes and other information.
• NQTechACCESS Committee has been formed and I am holding the first meeting on Monday July 23rd.
• I've obtained several donations from local businesses to use in an effort to raise funds. Also I may have gained a new sponsor for some of our youth programs Biz Venture in particular. My supervisor is speaking with her about the details and working that out.
• For the first time ever all the computers in the Cyber Cafe and the Biz Center are fully functional and all have the same programs available.
• My program has come to realize the Terms of Use needed to be changed to cover some ongoing issues with users and at last agreed to let me make those changes. They take effect on August 1st. Along with that my program after a review of the bills has agreed to raise the Cyber Cafe fee. We took into account that some may not be able to pay so we have set up a volunteer arrangement for those who just don't have the 2.00 per month (yup just 2.00 mostly we service teens so anything more they might have a hard time with)
• Our volunteer work party was a success we had a very good turnout and accomplished a lot of clean up and some repairs.
• I have a completed Technology Plan made out that has brought us in well under our technology budget.

Currently I am working on:

• Arrangements to do a book fair to benefit my organization through Barnes & Noble booksellers. The people there are even helping me get word out because our town is so small. They're assisting with some mailings. This is an event my organization can repeat year after year if it is a success.
• Arranging an event at the bookstore to draw attention to the organization and what we do. I am currently contacting trainers for assistance and therapy animals to see if we can help each other out.
• Organizing all of the information for the pending book fair to present to the committee.
• Scheduling the next committee meeting. The committee will meet for 2 hours every 2 weeks. So far it consist of 10 members but is growing as I am in contact with other interested parties.
• Working with a dealer for software that assist visually impaired computer users to obtain a software program suitable for users who are blind at a cost we can afford. He is hoping to obtain Jaws for us.
• Attempting to locate 3 computers that are not ancient and are suitable to be used for our accessibility software. We will make these our accessible computers and reserve them for users with disabilities. (all of our computers are ancient and the processors cannot support some of the applications needed)
• Working on obtaining 16 new (never used) computer monitors from the state surplus sales.

It doesn't seem like much sitting here looking this over. I keep wondering what I am forgetting. Anyway things are still hectic and the stress level is high but things are getting done.

Comment from Angela Saylor on July 20, 2007 - 3:06pm

I'd have to disagree with you as it sounds like your doing so much!! You sound as if you really are making progress and accomplishing important activities for your org. It's great that you are being given a good deal of leverage and ability within your org. great job!

Comment from Kevin Palmer on July 23, 2007 - 12:02pm

Good to hear things are running a bit more smoothly now! And yes you are accomplishing a load of work. Could you detail the volunteer work party? How was that organized? Never heard of that before at a tech center but seems like a great idea.

Comment from Rayna Ramirez on July 23, 2007 - 1:39pm

My fellow VISTA Pat arranged the work party and she is happy to tell you about it. She is working on her Field Report now.

Comment from Kelli Williams on August 2, 2007 - 10:39am

The volunteer work party sounds similar to something we do here at the Triangle United Way in the project Teaming for Technology. I know that's a long title. We have a warehouse full of the inventory we receive-anything from computers to mice to you name it-and we have a full time employee that is in charge of refurbishing all of it. Since it is significantly more than a one person job, we hold "hardware parties" that we invite our member organizations, local companies, and random volunteers to. They come spend however much time they have and we give them things to do like cleaning keyboards and mice or loading software. It's fairly low-tech and easy, but it helps us get a lot done in a much shorter amount of time and the voluteers feel good about what they've done. It's a win-win. It's also been pretty easy to get people to come to them, and I am now fielding numerous requests from several organizations and companies to set up their own regular and exclusive dates they can send their employees to. It's a pretty good idea.

Generation FIVE has completed its move to a smaller office space (although unpacking continues). I disassembled the four computers and the LAN that connected them to each other, to the printer, and to the DSL modem, helped move them to the new office, and reassembled them there. I learned the hard way the difference between a straight-through cable and a crossover cable. I had read on wonderful Wikipedia that there were such things as crossover cables, but just didn't imagine we (Generation FIVE) had so many of them on hand, until I found that for a connection between a hub and a computer, some cables worked and others didn't, and I started looking at the colors of the insulation on the wires where they come into the connectors. I also learned to look out for broken hooks on Ethernet connectors. I'm still not sure exactly what conditions have to prevail to convince the router (I guess it is the responsible party) to give the hosts all unique (within our private network) IP numbers. If I power up everything in just the right sequence, it seems to work. I haven't come across a cable for the router's console port (it seems to want serial), nor does anyone currently here know how to administer it. But that may not matter, because it is working. The DSL took a couple of days to come in from the phone company, but it's now working, too.

Looking ahead, I have a pretty ambitious looking list of tasks for the year. My priority according to my supervisor is to arrange that a certain database can be reached from three workstations instead of just one. This database is about contacts and when they have donated, attended events and trainings, etc. Pretty much, the people and the events where they have interacted with the organization. The data are managed by a tool (or collection of scripts, templates, etc.) called "ebase", which depends on a licensed DBMS, Filemaker Pro, which evidently not only costs money but requires either a Microsoft operating system or a Mac. We may be looking at paying money for an upgrade to multi-user, while there may be software out there that will do it all for free. I'm not sure whether it is riskier to spend the money on new licenses (and maybe find later it wasn't necessary and we can't get the money back), or spend the time researching moving to a different DBMS and/or "relationship" or "contact" management system or the like (and maybe lose too much time researching). My supervisor thinks anything other than continuing with the current tool, upgraded as necessary, is too complicated to even think about, and maybe he is right.

Gen 5's web site is being handled by a consultant I haven't been introduced to yet, but from how it allows an administrator to update the content by editing over the web, it could be running on one of those content management systems (Drupal, Joomla, Plone, or similar). Do contact management and content management overlap somewhere?

Then there's another goal, to arrange that coworkers in remote cities be able to update the office database the same way as people in the central office can.

There may or may not be some solution to all three of these goals, but my priorities for some of them over others, along with constraints on how fast I can find out the requirements and desires (due to some people being absent for a while and others hard to reach), may make it necessary to solve each need independently of the others, and lose any advantage of possible synergy.

In response to my last report, the subject of saving money came up. And that leads to the subject of calculating present value. To save money, it's sometimes necessary to make decisions about whether to pay now or pay later. For example, if you need a house, there's the rent-or-buy decision. And for equipment and software, the buy-it-or-build-it decision. For figuring out which option will save money and which will cost more, it's necessary to calcualte present value, or the time value of money, as they say. And for that, you need to know the inflation rate (or so I contend). You need it to calculate the real interest rate from the nominal interest rate by subtracting the inflation rate. So, what rate is safest to use, for the inflation of the USD? And once you know that, what do you use for the nominal interest rate, that on Treasury bills, or that on bank CDs?

For a real example where the time value of money would matter, there's the question of whether to try to sell the (friendly) co-tenants of the building on sharing our DSL, vs. keeping quiet, in which case they would probably continue to use their cable service and we would continue to use our DSL service. A monthly saving would be secured if we shared, but there would an up-front cost to wire the building to connect our respective private LANs together. Pay so much now, to save so much a month, forever. A classic time-value-of-money question.

Comment from Morgan Sully on July 23, 2007 - 1:20pm

Hey Jack,
sounds like you've got some really great challenges ahead of you.

The Chinese character for 'challenge' is also the same as the one for 'opportunity'.

There are softwares out there that link content management with contact management. I'm a fan of CiviCRM. It can be used within the Drupal as well as Joomla frameworks.

Here's another link from our wiki on some other tools you may find helpful: http://www.ctcvista.org/digest/spring07/Trends/Tools_For_The_Next_Revolution

Are you Linux user?

Comment from Jack Waugh on July 23, 2007 - 6:48pm

Thanks for the link; some of that may indeed be relevant.

As for Linux, Generation FIVE is wholly Microsoft. I run Linux (Ubuntu) on my personal computer, however.

--
Jack Waugh
703-863-3200

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of research on capacity building: What is it? How can we evaluate it? Is there a “best practice” approach to capacity building? Is there a common conceptual framework for capacity building? What are the benefits of doing it? Who should do it? How do you promote capacity building in your organization? In what ways can CTC VISTA build its capacity? How does CTC VISTA help individual VISTAs build the capacity in their organizations?

I’ve found some helpful resources that address some of these questions. I’ve been using them, along with a book titled Communication Planning: An Integrated Approach, to help with CTC VISTA’s ongoing strategic planning. The Project is also working on developing internal communications, outreach, and fundraising plans that summarize the goals and implementation procedures for those areas.

The capacity building work we’re doing so far doesn’t change what the Project does, rather it provides a useful framework that helps us stay focused, productive, and capable of evolving with the needs of those we serve. It also helps clarify the Project and eliminate transitional issues in an organization with an inherently high turnover rate. Eventually the Project might develop new ways in which to evaluate its own capacity building, and the capacity being built by individual VISTAs.

I’d be very interested to hear anyone’s thoughts on or their experiences with these issues. I’m attaching two of the resources I’ve found very helpful in this process. Here, too, is a link to the Free Management Library, which has additional resources and links.

Comment from Mike Moore on July 18, 2007 - 3:32pm

Haven't read your articles yet as I write this.

My thoughts:

One way to think of this, a way I think of it, is
building in efficiency. That takes getting to know
the "rhythm" so to speak of an organization - how,
why they do what they do.

Efficiency should be, my understanding, something
consistent with how an individual works, an organization's
process, workflow, philosophy, policies, an individuals as well as an organization's likes and dislikes. That takes some time to get to know.

And it's also, my understanding, giving them capacity
consistent with your given organizational mission and abilities.

Example:

Almost regardless of the organization you're involved
with, these underlying concerns may provide a springboard
to possible capacity building:

inventory tracking
software licensing
user literacy (training / tutorials)
development tools
online presence (RSS, website, infrastructure, etc)
developmental resources / contacts
organizational process improvements

Basically, as I see it, answering the fundamental question,
how can I within the scope of my responsibilities and
expertise help them do what they do better, more efficiently,
less effort, more bang. Sometimes it's readily apparent.
Something as simple as developing a checkout system
for a shared resource allowing them to do a better job
of tracking and scheduling. Other times it may not be
so readily apparent. You might have to ask questions,
see how they do what they do, get a feel for what their
daily routines and rhythms are.

Taking that time, increases the likelihood that whatever
suggestions, recommendations or changes you attempt to
implement will be consistent with rather than at odds with
their efforts, workflow and goals.

Put yourself in their shoes.

Most people don't appreciate having changes made in their
routine, by people they may not know or trust who may know little or nothing about them, what they do, why they do it.
What you propose is likely to be unhelpful, unused and resented
on that basis alone, nevermind the potential benefits.

All this is involved in leaving things better than you
found them. Capacity building is a collaborative effort
which involves the consent and cooperation of those you
hope to build the capacity of.

My best successes have been taking all that I've said here
into account. Sometimes people are perfectly content with
their system and process. It works for them. That's all
they need to know. And that perspective deserves respect.

Best of luck in your efforts.