On 16 October 2010 21:30, Tony de Sa <tonyde...@gmail.com> wrote: > Mr. Silvan M. De Sa was born in 1942. Hailing from the village of Soccoro, > (fellow G'netter to Vivian [Soccorkar] D' Souza), Silvan did his secondary > schooling from one of Bardez's prestigious institutions, St. Anthony's > High...
Dear Tony, Thanks for that interesting introduction, and for helping us to get to know about the work of other Goanetters. Your volunteering is certainly helpful, and to be appreciated. Though I met Silvan, your write-up told me about many other aspects about him. In part, Goa is impoverished because the left hand doesn't know the work that the right hand is doing in the State.... Way back in 2002, I had written something on him. This might be of interest to some others on the list: * * * Divinity @ Goa Frederick Noronha http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020812/login/main7.htm FROM sermons to software! That's the shift Silvan M. D'Sa wants to nudge churches in Goa into as he polishes his code that seeks to give the parish an IT thrust - and make it easy for priests to manage their funds and the faithful. >From keeping tab of church revenues to listing devotees in a particular neighbourhood, two of D'Sa's packages promise to make life easier for church administrators. One of them, Fabrica Accounts, keeps tabs of church accounts. It has slots to account for payments made for a range of service - prayers in the cemetery, processions, sermons, bells and chimes - or the celebrant's stipend. "You don't need to think... just go to the right slot and enter the amount," said D'Sa, who runs a small software outfit, Computech, out of the north Goa town of Mapusa. From the church revenue, a part of the earning goes to the priest as compensation for his work. "This segregation is done by the software," said D'Sa. Each month, a summary of the accounts is automatically generated. The software complies with the requirements of the Goa church. It confirms to the income and expenditure register that is required by the Goa and Daman Archdiocese's seccao das confrarias (section for confrarias). Another software that D'Sa has written keeps records of parish members. It cross-links devotees residing in the neighbourhood with the ledgers where their records are maintained. If a priest wants to get across his message by post, the software generates neat mailing labels that list the heads of the households. Posting out a message to all thus becomes an easier task. But finding the right persons to run the software is no easy task. "People come for a month, and then leave. I've trained at least five persons so far," lamented D'Sa. Getting takers for the program is also not easy - not surprising, given that software is a rather new field in Goa. http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020812/login/main7.htm * * * And this is what Silvan wrote about eight years ago, telling me about his work here: Thanks for your email regarding the Census software for Goan Parish Churches. Although I am not good at writing articles, here is a brief description of the software package. As I used to be a member of the Fabrica of "Our Lady of Socorro Church", Socorro, Bardez, Goa from 1998-2001, I inherited a labourious handwritten system of accounting for the various pastoral activities of our Church. After taking over from my predecessor, I decided to computerize the accounting system. Initially the system was DOS-based but after learning MS-Access the implementation was converted to Windows, The system produces various reports and screen displays as required by our Parish Vicar. A Trial Balance is available at any time to check the arithmetical accuracy. In early 2000, our Parish Vicar needed a system to find out the composition of parishioners of each ward of the Village broken down by Sectors which are further made up of various individual households and the details of all the persons making up each household. After almost 1 year of development, I have designed a Windows-based system using the MS-Access platform called the "Parish Census" system. One can find out in seconds, the total number of parishioners in each sector, ward, household as well as details of each individual such as his name, age, date of birth, date of marriage, education, place of work, whether resident or non-resident etc. etc. Facility also exists for printing mailing labels of every "Head of House" for purpose of circulars and mass mailings. In addition, there are three modules namely, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials where the data is input from the official Registers kept by each Church. Once this data is input in the system, one can locate any parishioner's document by selecting his name from a drop-down screen list. The Beta version of this system was installed in the Socorro church early last year [2001] and it is running well according to expectations. Both these systems can be customised according to each Parish requirements. I in the process of giving a few finishing touches to the software and the packages will be advertised in the local dailies by end of this month.