Starter Kit. Idea 343 of 500. Cluster 17
A daily check-in service: a nurse's visit, a photograph, a message to the child abroad
The mechanism, from the book
Sri Lankans abroad have parents at home whom they cannot look after from Melbourne. They will pay, and the money stays.
The first step
Recruit one retired nurse in your town for mornings, then offer five families abroad a free fortnight: a short visit to their parent each day, one photograph and a two-line message sent before they wake. On the last day, name a monthly price and ask who wants to continue. If 2 of the 5 pay, you have a service; if none do, ask each family what was missing.
- Who pays first
- A daughter abroad who phones every evening and cannot tell from the voice whether her father has eaten, and would pay for someone who can see.
- What leaves today
- Children abroad send money home with no eyes on the result; a daily visit record gives them the proof they now fly home to get.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask whether a nurse visiting homes needs any local notice or registration.
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what consent is needed to send photographs of a parent abroad.
Check before you spend
The nurse's registration and insurance, the parent's own consent to visits and photographs, and what the nurse does if she finds the parent unwell.
Find out these three numbers
- What monthly price will families abroad pay after the free fortnight?
- How many homes can one nurse visit each morning?
- What does a retired nurse expect for a morning's work?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"Proof moves people. Argument mostly does not."
A daily photograph is proof the child abroad can see, which no promise can match.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.