An Overview of Sumando Manos Foundation

Based in Miami, Florida, Sumando Manos Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children and adolescents from economically challenged areas in Argentina. Its founders, a group of friends residing in Miami, share the same vision of intolerance towards idleness when being able to help in times of pressing needs.

The organization emphasizes financial responsibility and transparency. It has implemented a strict accounting and financial reporting system to ensure all funding is allocated and used accordingly. Furthermore, cash is rarely sent. Instead, work is done directly under the supervision of people from Sumando Manos.

In addition, the foundation’s website features a map with precisely marked locations where Sumando Manos has realized projects, as well as charts displaying its activities, primary sources of funding, and fundraising activities.

Most Sumando Manos’ projects cover areas in the north of Argentina where more than half of the population lives under the poverty line. In addition, over 4000 rural schools are reportedly in a state of nutritional emergency further exacerbated by insufficient and inconsistent state aid, unreliable or non-existent infrastructure, and no medical and educational assistance.

Sumando Manos strives to alleviate the crisis by helping in four main spheres: health and hygiene, nutrition, infrastructure, and others. Health and hygiene make up the biggest share of the foundation’s activities (39 percent) and include providing children with pediatric and dental examinations and care. In collaboration with other local non-profits like FANDA, helping children with hearing disabilities, and Camino a la Casita, an educational center, Sumando Manos also delivers educational lectures on health prevention.

With 32 percent, nutrition takes second place. The foundation has established a breakfast program and distributes canned and fresh foods. Next comes infrastructure (22 percent) that encompasses various activities such as digging wells, installing water tanks and electric generators, and constructing buildings. One of the foundation’s latest infrastructure projects was realized in Morillo and Los Blancos in Salta province, Northwest Argentina.

The period between March and December is characterized by severe drought, which causes water shortages within the Wichi community in the province. People must travel between 19 and 92 miles to fetch water from the water treatment plant supplying the vital liquid. Once they reach it, however, they can take up to two to three 34-ounce cans since that is the amount they could transport with their motorcycles or bikes.

Thanks to the 159-gallon water tanks installed by Sumando Manos in their homes, 200 families will have a stable water supply and will not have to embark on the trip to the water treatment plan. The “Others” category accounts for 7 percent of the foundation’s activities. It involves supplying schools with educational materials and tools, furniture, games, toys, and distributing clothes and shoes donated by the organization’s partners.

Sumando Manos uses multiple online crowdfunding platforms such as GlobalGiving, Caring Crowd, and Bright Funds and organizes various fundraising events, including corporate gatherings, sports tournaments, and raffles. Since its inception in 2005, the organization has helped over 12,000 children.

For its relatively short existence, just above 15 years, Sumando Manos has received multiple awards and recognitions. The organization is a two-time winner of the Social Ambassadors Awards for Help Argentina in 2009 and 2011. It has also won 1st place in the 2015 GlobalGiving’s Fail Report Contest, where non-profits share about a new project that did not work out as expected and the lessons learned. In the same year, the Sumando Manos’ president and founding member Guillermo Donaire was featured in Diario las Américas, published in Miami since 1953, one of the oldest Spanish-language newspapers in the US.

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How Hotel Automation Can Benefit Hospitality

Self-checkouts at supermarkets, online banking, and online flight check-in are just a few examples of industries that have embraced automation. Seldomly implementing technological advancements, the hospitality industry has also become more willing to take advantage of automation.

One of the main propellers of this shift was the outbreak of the global pandemic in 2020, which left hotels with depleted resources and reduced personnel. The need to meet stricter requirements with smaller teams while keeping the same levels of efficiency heightened the need for digital technologies like automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

Some hoteliers may still be reluctant to introduce automation for fear of losing the human factor, but hotel automation is not about exchanging guest personnel for robots. On the contrary, automation aims at optimizing efficiency by eliminating tedious and time-consuming tasks, offering machine-proof operational reliability, and pointing to any deficiencies. Doing so will ultimately enable teams to concentrate on the most essential: providing guests with exceptional service and experience.

Automated alerts and rules can eliminate confusion and delays in teams’ performance. Each team member will be aware of their responsibilities, when, and how to perform them. Furthermore, hotel automation enables process standardization. Thus, minimizing individual interpretations and ensuring all internal quality and service standards are kept.

Walkie-talkies and WhatsApp groups might help handle guest requests, but they do not provide any visibility on the type of incoming requests and their resolution status. Not only can a hotel automation system do this, but it can also give broader insights. It can point to any efficiency weaknesses such as unfulfilled within the stipulated timeframe guest requests, too many unhandled requests, and repetitively reported issues. Thus, providing a better understanding of areas requiring improvement.

Hotel automation can go in various directions from different departments to different areas of the guest experience. Some examples include automating hotel tasks management, guest feedback management, and guest communication.

Among the most common causes of not fulfilling guest requests is they get lost. Guests tend to ask the first person they see who rarely is the right one for the task. A hotel task management system can send automated alerts and rules for incoming requests, which will enable teams to concentrate on their specific tasks and handle them quickly and accurately. Adding an escalation system can further improve efficiency by sending notifications to management whenever a deadline is missed.

When it comes to guest feedback, it is essential to address it no later than 72 hours. The reason is the majority of prospective guests will check only the latest reviews placed at the top. Many hotels experience difficulties in responding within this time frame. An automated guest feedback management system can help them by sending an alert and creating a task whenever a guest leaves a negative review. Furthermore, if the review remains unresponded, the task can be forwarded to the next level of customer care.

With regards to guest communication, answering simple but repetitive questions is inefficient and time-consuming. According to research conducted by ReviewPro, a hotel management software solutions provider, 63 percent of all communication of a chain comprising 30 hotels was about the same eight questions. Automating guest communication and having chatbots handle the most common queries can reduce the time spent on responding to them and facilitate a prompt and exhaustive response.

Outgoing communication can also benefit from automation. By setting up communication rules, hotels can connect with their guests before, during, and after their stay. They could provide them with detailed information and improve their overall experience.

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