ConnectLocal

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Inspiration

We were largely concerned about the marginal communities, the environment, and access to food during COVID-19. Throughout this year, we continuously heard stories on the news about the waste of food on farms, along with the lack of profit being made by each of the workers. If we can utilize these abundances of food and distribute it throughout the community, we can increase the economy, sustainability, and production for small business owners. Both the farmers and business owners can benefit from each other, which is why we created ConnectLocal. Not to mention, fires out west are jeopardizing farms, which will raise the cost of so much fresh fruit and products. Making it more important to use our resources efficiently!!

What it does

Our website allows farmers to register with our site, creating a profile, and then submit requests for fresh products from local farms. Local Farmers can log in and search for restaurants with open requests that they can fulfill or they can also create their own profile and list their fresh fruit and products for sale on the site. We also aim to build a recommendation system using our database to match farms and businesses based on their demands (ex. locations, needs, and sales match more than 50%, etc.). We are essentially creating an online marketing platform to connect the farmers and businesses that are in need of each other.

How we built it

Since our company heavily requires a platform for farmers and businesses to connect, we made a website with a front-end for easy accessibility for owners, and a back-end to store users and requests. We used HTML/CSS on the front end with a Python backend using the Django framework and rest API. PHP is being used to connect to the API to send request information to the database and collect the data from the database. Before we coded the website from scratch, we used Figma for the UI design.

Challenges we ran into

Time was definitely an issue. We had difficulty scaling back the project enough to fit it into the allotted time. There were certain things, such as user authentication, which add complexity, but which we couldn't implement without. We used the Django framework and database which was new to us. The migration process was challenging as well. Last but not the least, we are still pretty much a beginner team whereas this is the first hackathon for half of our team. However, we understand that it is very difficult to create a fully functioning website with a front-end and back-end in one day, nonetheless, we did our best as a team to overcome any of the challenges that came our way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really excited to work on an idea that directly impacts the lives of people in a positive way. The designs are really great for our product. As beginners, we learn new concepts and languages along the way with help from mentors and online resources. Not to mention, we were able to make good progress on coding the website in a couple of hours. Our group worked brilliantly together, and we are VERY proud of all our accomplishments.

What we learned

We each learned new tools, such as Django and PHP, and also got more familiar with designing using Figma. Given the time constraint, it might have been better to use a tool, such as WordPress or Dreamweaver with a SQL DB. Trying to create a full website from the ground up in such a short time frame is probably not realistic. It also might have been better to look at the skills we already had when choosing the tools and maybe decided who would be working on what component and then determine the next step.

What's next for ConnectLocal

We all believe that ConnectLocal is a great product and idea that we would love to pursue outside this hackathon. Our next step is completing all of the front-end pages and connect them with the API using PHP. We will also be working on building the user database for features like the recommendation system.