MerryHearts

We aim to provide orphaned children with personalized Christmas Gifts and spread Christmas joy!

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Inspiration

Our inspiration stemmed from how during Christmas season, people are more incentivized to do good deeds as a way to end the year paired with it being a widely celebrated event throughout the world. Our initial idea was a Secret Santa website with strangers, however we felt that we could have further developed the idea. This eventually led us to settle on focusing on orphanages since we felt that the kids there might not gain the love that they feel as they lack specialized attention compared to typical households. Also, since we felt that Christmas was a time that many often like to show their love through gift giving, we felt that creating MerryHearts would allow these orphans to feel more special and help them feel more confident and positive about their upbringing.

What it does

MerryHearts aims to provide a platform for users to carry out good deeds during Christmas, and build the community spirit. This impacts the recipient's well-being by allowing users to volunteer and brighten up children's lives, allowing them to feel more special and loved. Additionally, we aim to create a more vibrant future in the children's lives and give them more love and attention. We also hope for users to contribute to community spirit, and feel the satisfaction of how they have impacted the children's lives. We eventually hope to encourage others to contribute to society, even through small acts of kindness, starting from young ones, who can eventually give back.

How we built it

MerryHearts was built using Visual Studio Code alongside a separate portion using Figma. We used various languages from Python, CSS, HTML and JavaScript. Figma allowed us to have an easier and more visual way for us to carry out our website design, while the coding allowed us to link different webpages together allowing for it to function as a website.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge that we ran into was that most of us knew different languages and were familiar with different applications. It was hard to find a language that we all were confident in and an application that we were able to code at the same time and knew how to use. Eventually, we decided to settle on Visual Studio Code, however some of our schedules clashed and since some of us attended the BBCS workshops physically while the others attended it online, it was extremely difficult for us to have physical meet ups which could have contributed to higher productivity, especially considering we were not familiar with each other prior.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some accomplishments that we feel that we did were combining the use of 2 different applications in the use of our website. Some of us went out of our way to learnt how to learn how to link Figma into HTML and CSS allowing us to have a more visualised way of creating the website's design, while the others were able to apply the skills that we have recently learnt from the Building Blocs conference despite learning it recently during the course. We felt that learning the basics of each language within a short amount of time and being able to apply it was a small success for us.

What we learned

We learnt the basic coding of different languages, like JavaScript, and what working together in a coding project would be like within a short time frame. It required us to strategize and make the best of what we could do with our abilities and the short duration that we were given. Especially since we were not familiar with each other skills, it required us to set time aside to familiarize ourselves and accommodate to our different strengths and weaknesses. We also learnt that time management between each other is important as a delay between one another can result in a snowball effect. Lastly, we learnt that continuously revising was important, especially in application as some of us felt that the workshops, despite giving us enough information, did not provide us which the much needed time to process how the skills could be use and apply accordingly. Overall, we did come out stronger through learning new skills, abilities and stronger teamwork.

What's next for MerryHearts

We look to expand it not only for orphanages but also include elderly homes, and different family structures (families where children may not feel as much attention or love growing up, examples include: divorced families, single parents, abused children etc.) , to provide them the same warmth and love that we want to give the children. Eventually, we also hope to expand towards our original goal of bringing together different groups of people, and different users online and building connections with one another. This can help build a stronger bond within the community, similar to how people in the past were more friendly and caring towards one another.

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