GreenSolve

GreenSolve is a platform for promoting a greener and cleaner world through the cooperation of fellow neighbors.

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Inspiration

Local environmental problems like unsanitary garbage disposal, the aftermath of natural disasters, dirty beaches, roads, and more pester many communities. Moreover, it often takes a long time for officials to address such issues. And thus, Green Solve takes community health into the hands of its members. Volunteers living in the vicinity of a reported problem are prompted to volunteer their services and help solve it.

What it does

Green Solve brings people together in the name of social good. Our platform works by first having volunteers signing up for our phone list on our sign up page. This will add their number and zip code to a database that will store their information. The zipcode will be used to make sure you will only be texted about events close to your location. The rest of the platform is communicated all using SMS messaging with Twilio. The volunteers will receive SMS messages that inform them of events that are happening nearby and the volunteers can respond to the text if they are going or not. The reason we chose using text with phone numbers instead of a website or app is because it would just be easier for the user to receive texts instead having to unnecessarily download apps or pull up a website every time. Also, a user only needs their phone number to use this website which eliminates the need of having to remember their login every time and instead they can just confirm their phone number once.

How we built it

We used a Java framework called Javalin to create an HTTP server to process commands from the website, and integrated the Twilio API in order to send and receive text messages from the backend. We then used MongoDB in order to store user information and events, and hosted this site on a Google Cloud VM. All traffic is run through Cloudflare to upgrade requests to HTTPS, and then routed through Nginx to forward the request to our locally hosted backend HTTP server. For the frontend, we hosted it on Penn State sites used Wordpress tools along with Javascript and HTML to construct it. We also used our domain generated by Domain.com in order to forward requests from the website to Cloudflare and then to our Nginx server, then to our Javalin backend.

Challenges we ran into

Combining back-end and front-end of the website was the main challenge. Adding the feature of receiving and sending text messages through the website was another one that we were able to solve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to learn how to start a project by considering the key factors to develop a website with additional features.

What we learned

We learnt how to seamlessly integrate different tools such as back-end, front-end website development and text messaging tools.

What's next for GreenSolve

Features to be added:

  • RSVP feature
  • Notifications for signing up for an event
  • Automatically add the event to calendars like Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar etc.
  • Interactive map
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