Maaktabi

Inspiration

Yosamin's family sought refuge from Afghanistan to Canada in 2007 to escape the war against the Taliban, and to seek higher education. In 2021, Afghanistan was fully taken over by the Taliban, and women's rights were regressed by generations as girls and women were no longer allowed to attend schools or work. Despite these new governmental regulations, the Afghan media pushed back by providing televised science lessons that girls could watch from their own homes. This inspired us to produce Maaktabi, which is a free e-learning service for students who were no allowed to attend schools past August 2021.

What it does

Maaktabi is an e-learning service that allows students to register themselves and enroll into a customized program. They can either follow along their curriculum asynchronously, or attend online Zoom meetings for synchronous class time with local female teachers that speak their dialect.

How we built it

We started by sketching out the initial design on sheets of paper. Once we had a loose idea, we set up our repository and got to hacking. We used NextJS, a React-based framework combined with the MaterialUI component library to build pages and design our layout. Through the GitHub version control system, we were able to collaborate on the prototype.

Challenges we ran into

Maaktabi has to overcome several obstacles. These include socio-cultural norms (i.e. a student being in a family who does not believe in their right to education, and requires discreet use of this learning platform), local dialects, and distribution of access to the platform.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

During this hackathon we practiced team building exercises to get to know each other better and increase our effectivity. As a team, we each painted our "dreamscape" on canvases, and explained their significance to each other. We entered this hackathon as strangers, and exited it as great companions. Friendship is our greatest accomplishment.

What we learned

We learned how to use and implement React and Heroku components, how to edit JSX, and how to branch and resolve with GitHub.

What's next for Maaktabi

We want to further develop our website, which includes building a functional back-end. We also want to reach out to various organizations that could support and sponsor us, like the United Nations and the Malala Fund.