iVoluntee

Our homepage

Inspiration

We were inspired to create this app from the challenges that were provided at the hackathon; since several companies were challenging participants to create applications with a social impact, we decided to face said challenges head-on. Most importantly however, we realized that we would be making an application that any of us could see ourselves using, and with some of us being members of a fraternity in our school developing something that would allow us to do philanthropy

What it does

iVoluntee gives direct access to its members to all nearby philanthropic opportunities, giving them the chance to help in any way they want to. Whether it be donating or physically helping a cause or event, with our application users are immediately exposed to anything available around them. Moreover, users can filter these opportunities by searching for tags that interest them most. To encourage people to help, we have also integrated a point ranking system in order to appeal to the competitive side of them.

How we built it

Since it is a web application, a lot of work was done with HTML/CSS/TypeScript in order to create the initial static webpages that would be the foundation we would work from. We used GitHub for version control and being able to all work at once on different parts of the project without ruining each other's code. Using Python, MongoDB, Firebase and Flask, we built the back-end servers and databases to hold and manage both the authentication of the users account as well as the information they provide us with. From there, we used Angular to create the web application that you see now, connecting both the front and back-ends we had worked on.

Challenges we ran into

As a whole, because the project utilizes so many different things one of the challenges we faced was making sure it all fit together perfectly; specially when linking the front and back-ends of the application. On top of that we all had to research and code things we had previously never done, making the whole process of creating this application more time-consuming than it might've been.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For one thing, this is the first real hackathon of one of our members, and the final product we were able to deliver is amazing keeping that in mind. Moreover, like I mentioned before, all of us had to delve into new territories, and to be able to produce what we did is something we are definitely proud of.

What we learned

A lot. From HTML/CSS to creating a server using Flask to storing information in the MongoDB database, many of the things we did were firsts for us. Moreover, we learned how to divide our work efficiently and help each other with anything we thought we could.

What's next for iVoluntee

We believe that with further development and the involvement of non-profit companies, this could potentially become more than just a hackathon app; more often than not we have found ourselves with more free time than we know what to do with, and we're sure others have too. With our application, they could channel this time into truly making a difference for someone else. And that's something that would make all of us proud.