Voices of the Benetech Service Net Community
Benetech is working with local Bay Area organizations to increase access to human services in the region. Earlier this year, we began piloting Benetech Service Net with six community partners: Eden I&R (211 Alameda County), Health Leads, Legal Aid Association of California, San Mateo County, ShelterTech, and United Way Bay Area (211 Program).
As we move into the second half of the pilot, we’re pleased
to highlight reflections from a few of our partners on the learnings from this cross-sector
collaboration.
Not familiar with Benetech Service Net? Watch our explainer video.
Placing Community at the Center of Our Work
Health Leads resource operations associate, Aranxta Sanchez-Cruz, wrote about the “Brave New World for Community Resource Navigation” that this pilot has enabled. A national healthcare organization that partners with communities and health systems to address systemic causes of inequity and disease, Health Leads has long been leading the way in compiling data on community resources. In the blog, she reflected on the value of the monthly meetings that the pilot partners have held to discuss their experiences using the Service Net platform:
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Read Aranxta’s full blog: “A Brave New World for Community Resource Navigation”
Technology Cannot Be Built in a Vacuum
Our partners at ShelterTech, a nonprofit dedicated to solving the biggest technology problems faced by people experiencing homelessness, also released a blog about their experience with the pilot. This piece champions a collaborative, open-source approach to addressing homelessness and poverty in the Bay Area:
“Benetech’s Service Net initiative underlines that building technology cannot be done in a vacuum and that, despite our important work as an individual organization, we are worth even more when part of a collective. Our main priority is always the human lives that we can be instrumental in changing, and the ways in which we can have the biggest impact on them. Being part of programs like this one encourages us to remember that and keep it at the very center of what we do.”
Improving the Overall Social Safety Net System
Finally, our pilot partners at the United Way Bay Area had the opportunity to share their perspective on the project with local business reporter, Carolyn Said, for the San Francisco Chronicle. During the Interview, Kelly Batson, senior vice president for community impact at United Way of the Bay Area, shared her motivations for participating in the pilot. Said wrote:
Her [Batson’s] goals in participating in Service Net mirror those of the pilot itself: improve the overall system, share the data United Way collects, stop duplicating efforts, and make it easier for service providers to enter information.
“Why are we all updating the same resources?” Batson said. “The platform Benetech is creating lets us look at each other’s data and see when a change has been made so we’re not all trying to update the same records.”
Stronger Together
Without our partners there would be no Service Net. We thank all of our pilot participants and the greater Service Net community for their support of this initiative. Together we can ensure that everyone has access to the human services they need, when they need it, no matter which organization they reach out to for help.
Stay tuned for more news on our Bay Area pilot and an update
on our work in Sacramento.
Learn more about the Bay
Area pilot of Benetech Service Net
The post Voices of the Benetech Service Net Community appeared first on Benetech | Software for Social Good.
Source: Benetech
