soupS

This Christmas celebrate the spirit of giving by volunteering at soup kitchens near you.

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Inspiration

This Christmas, why not celebrate the season of giving by volunteering at a soup kitchen? But just going to a random nearby soup kitchen may not be the best way to go about it. Some soup kitchens may not have enough volunteers while others may just be overstaffed. Moreover, many soup kitchens have their own sign-up services that make the whole process more tedious. What if there was an app to make the whole process easier and more impactful?

What it does

On soupS, soup kitchens can sign up and send out staffing requests for volunteers on a regular schedule. They can also send out urgent requests to get users ASAP in case of understaffing. Potential volunteers can open the app and go tend to these requests without the need to create an account. They can send one-time fulfilment or regular shifts through the app itself.

How we built it

I built this app using Google Cloud FireStore and Firebase Authentication, along with the Google Maps API and Geolocation API to find nearby soup kitchens. The app itself was built using Dart/Flutter.

Challenges we ran into

Implementing the nearby soup kitchens feature was difficult, along with organizing the data in a clean manner on Cloud Firestore's NoSQL database. The UI of the app was requires a little more polish as certain features like Hero Animations were very difficult to create,

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am proud that I was able to create a working prototype of an app I believe can be genuinely useful to the community with proper implementation into society.

What we learned

I learnt a lot about structuring data on Cloud Firestore and using the Google Maps API for the very first time.

What's next for soupS

At first, I'd like to work on improving the UI of the app to make it look more seamless and include more stylistic animations. I am thinking of integrating user accounts along with incentives for people to volunteer more using badges and titles. In addition to that, I intend to implement a QR code system for volunteers to scan and get instantly logged by the soup kitchen as an active volunteer. I believe there can be many incentive-based schemes to promote volunteering in individuals.

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