BantuDidik

Empower Learning, Simplify Giving

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Inspiration

The inspiration for the BantuDidik project originates from the increasing financial barriers to education in Indonesia, highlighted by a 3.81% inflation rate in educational costs reported by BPS (Badan Pusat Statistik) in 2023. This inflation creates significant challenges for students who face uncertainties about their future and struggle to develop their full potential due to rising education costs.

Coincidently, Indonesia's recognition as the most generous country in the world by the Charities Aid Foundation's World Giving Index in 2023 reveals a strong will as a society to donate resources for educational growth. These factors show a gap in the current situation—while there is a clear desire to support education, there is a lack of a dedicated platform where donors can connect with students in need.

BantuDidik aims to bridge this gap by providing a streamlined and personalized donation process, enabling donors to easily contribute to educational causes. We believe that education is a right, not a privilege. By facilitating financial assistance to those affected by rising education costs, we ensure that talented students can pursue their dreams despite financial difficulties, as a result contributing to Indonesia's socio-economic progress.

What it does

BantuDidik is a platform designed to connect students in need of financial support with generous donors passionate about education. The app allows donors to create and customize their donations and choose recipients with the help of AI-assisted screening. Students can easily apply for financial aid, educational tools, or specific programs. Additionally, a real-time chat forum enables users to exchange ideas and connect, encouraging a supportive community. BantuDidik simplifies the donation process and ensures that financial barriers do not hinder students from achieving their educational goals.

How we built it

We began our 36-hour hackathon with a discussion to generate ideas and determine which one is feasible within the limited timeframe. To streamline our efforts and avoid the complexities of responsive design, we decided to focus on creating a mobile design for our app, even though it was intended for a web platform. This allowed us to prioritize functionality over form and make the most efficient use of our time.

We worked in parallel, with team members simultaneously focusing on programming, designing, and conceptualizing the app. This approach ensured that no time was wasted and allowed us to quickly iterate and integrate different components.

In our design concept, we chose the fox as our mascot and coral as our palette. Inspired by the clever and resourceful fox, it symbolizes intelligence, adaptability, and the bridging of gaps. Just as a fox navigates its environment with agility and wisdom, our platform, BantuDidik, aims to connect the needs of students with the generosity of donors efficiently. We created or traced the vector assets and illustrations. We make them into components of our design system.

In developing the program, while much of our product relied on standard CRUD operations, we incorporated several groundbreaking features. For instance, recognizing the difficulty of building a real-time chat application using WebSockets within the given time, we opted to use Firestore’s real-time database feature from Google Firebase. This decision enabled us to successfully implement a real-time chat feature. Additionally, we embedded Google’s Gemini 1.5 AI engine into our app, allowing us to develop an advanced AI screening feature.

Challenges we ran into

Throughout our journey in creating BantuDidik, we faced several challenges. We had to try using a tech stack that was relatively new to us, which is Firebase, to create the desired final product. Convincing ourselves that we could realize our problem-solving ideas within a limited timeframe was another significant hurdle. Last, creating animation videos to showcase our product through Figma was particularly challenging, but it helped us to learn more about Figma's features.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We achieved several key milestones in the development of BantuDidik. We successfully integrated AI with our main system, making it one of the standout features of our product. We also managed to implement a new tech stack effectively to build the desired final product. Additionally, we adapted our design skills to overcome shortcomings and tackle the challenges we encountered along the way.

What we learned

Using a new tech stack during the development of BantuDidik taught us many new things. We enriched our knowledge of Figma's features because we used it to create animation videos for our product. This experience broadened our understanding and skills significantly as this is our first-ever offline hackathon together as well. Not only did we focus on the technical aspects, but we also paid attention to the values and impacts that would be beneficial as this project evolves. We established the core values of our application on our "About" page: empathy, empowerment, and enrichment. These values guide us in making a difference in the educational paths of Indonesian students and the broader community.

What's next for BantuDidik

Looking ahead, we hope to develop a 1-on-1 real-time chat feature that will make it easier for the giver and the receiver users to communicate. We also aim to enhance this project by integrating a payment gateway system into the application, which will improve the security and reliability of our product. We hope that our project not only implements the concept of helping hands but also evolves beyond just a hackathon project, providing lasting benefits to the community.

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