The following post was published at The Salvation Army’s blog this week. 

Have you ever sent or received a package and tracked it online through UPS? If so, you’re probably familiar with the useful technology that keeps you well informed and your parcell accounted for throughout the process. 

Now, UPS has donated use of their Trackpad® technology to The Salvation Army for use in Haiti relief efforts, adapting the barcode scanning system to disaster relief supply distribution. 

Using unique, laminated cards with barcodes, The Salvation Army is now able to streamline distribution of food, medical supplies, and shelter for the 4,000 families living in a makeshift camp near the Port-au-Prince compound. 

These high-tech coded cards store useful information such as the type and amount of supplies the family has received, where they live within the camp, and how many members are in their family. They also resist wear and tear far better than the handwritten, paper index cards previously used, as well as reduce fraud and theft. In addition to using the technology to optimize food distribution, the Salvation Army also plans to use the cards and tracking system to help with the distribution of hygiene kits and tarps to prepare for the upcoming rainy season. 

UPS technology provider Cardinal Tracking provided the barcode cards and donated labor and equipment for the project. The system includes 4,000 laminated cards, two handheld scanners and a laptop. 

Damaris Frick, manager of the Salvation Army’s camp in Port Au Prince, said in an official statement, “We are abundantly grateful to UPS for providing this new distribution system. The technology will improve the speed of the distribution, helping us to keep the process as orderly as possible…We will no longer need to manually input distribution data, which will also speed up and increase the accuracy of our reporting process to other NGOs and donors.” 

In addition to the UPS Trackpad project, UPS’s relief effort in Haiti has included: 

• $1 million in cash and in-kind donations to relief organization partners, including CARE, the U.N. World Food Programme, and the American Red Cross.
• Logistics coordination for relief shipments.
• Air, ground, and ocean shipping.
• Employee volunteers to help prepare relief shipments and assist relief agencies.
• Loaning logistics management expertise to assist the U.N. World Food Programme’s Logistics Emergency Team in the Dominican Republic by overseeing warehousing and other distribution operations.