NYCare

Inspiration

We wanted to streamline the process of looking for somewhere to offer your help and time to. Volunteering to give back to the community is a wonderful thing, but it can be overwhelming to find a place nearby, without spending a while on Google Maps to do some research. We wanted to make this process as straightforward as possible.

What it does

NYCare displays nearby resources that are looking for volunteer assistance in New York City (such as food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and more) on an easy-to-use map locator, without all the clutter.

Our goal is to provide an intuitive and simple tool that hosts all the information a volunteer would need at first glance: the nearest locations from a specified zip code, and a location's address and contact information, using the filters to look up different types of services.

How we built it

• Frontend: HTML, CSS
• Backend: Javascript, JSON, Leaflet
• Our database used was retrieved from NY Open Data.

Challenges we ran into

We were unable to find additional team members who had experience in mobile app development in time, so we had to stick with a website version-only. We also couldn't implement all the features we originally wanted to include fast enough, such as a separate page targetting visitors requesting aid (instead of looking to volunteer).

There was initially some trouble loading up the markers on Windows (a conflict due to different operating systems), despite no issues with the script itself. The markers display as they should when run through a live server(?).

The biggest issue we faced was figuring out how to get the coordinates for the general area of a zip code via geocoding, but it has now been implemented.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Sean very quickly produced markers for all the locations in our given database that display when the corresponding filter (checkbox) is selected.

Lucy gained experience with collaborating with someone for the first time, learning how to work on different branches and make better use of commit messages, and improved her skills in HTML, CSS.

What we learned

Lucy learned about the process of parsing data from JSON files from Sean using event listeners.

What's next for NYCare

The immediate step will be to implement a working lookup feature for zip code or address.

We also plan on asking the visitor if they are here to volunteer, or request aid: if they are in the latter, NYCare will pull up nearby centers offering immediate aid on a separate page. Redirect links to the appropriate applications and contact forms with premade email text will be given to streamline the process of reaching out for help.

Built With

• css
• data.ny.gov
• html
• javascript
• leaflet.js