Together We Thrive

We create solutions that empower refugees and help them rebuild their lives. Our tagline is "Empowering Refugees, Building Futures." By working together, we can create a better future for refugees.

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Inspiration

I noticed, years ago, that we had started a Humans of Lynbrook (based off of Humans of New York, the New York Times series that focuses on highlighting individual stories from the diverse NYC population). Talking to individuals that come from different cultures really expanded my worldview of what others have experienced in the past and I wanted to do something about that.
Our team was inspired by the ongoing refugee crisis around the world and wanted to do something to help. We saw a need for better data visualization tools to help aid organizations and government agencies make informed decisions and respond more effectively to the needs of refugees as well as a more concise resource where volunteer and information can intersect in a user friendly manner.

What it does

Our project, Together We Thrive, is an interactive web application that allows users to explore data on refugee populations around the world. The app features an interactive map, drop-down menu that allow users to filter and explore the personal yet traumatic memories of refugees that have lived through duress. For example, users can view the number of refugees in a particular country, their country of origin, and the reasons why they were displaced.

How we built it

We built the project using a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with Leaflet and D3.js libraries for the interactive map and the API endpoints. We attempted to snarf our data from the UNHCR and other credible organizations, cleaning and formatting it before uploading it to our web server.

Challenges we ran into

One of the main challenges we faced was sourcing and cleaning the data. We had to work with data sets from multiple sources and in different formats, which required a lot of data wrangling and cleaning to get it into a usable format. (Especially since we already had difficulties with interacting with the API).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the final product we were able to create in just two days, which we believe has the potential to make a real impact in the world. We were also proud of our ability to work effectively as a team despite the challenges we faced, and the fact that we were able to learn new skills and technologies along the way. We as a whole were unfamiliar with these web development languages at the beginning of the hackathon, and at the end we not only took away a project we are proud to call ours, we also took away a new passion for STEM and everything that it can offer for our community.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned a lot about how API's work, web development, and the refugee crisis more broadly. We also gained experience working collaboratively with a team and coordinating our efforts in such a short amount of time.

What's next for Together We Thrive

Moving forward, we hope to continue developing and refining the website to make it even more useful and user-friendly. We also plan to work with aid organizations to get feedback on the app and identify areas where it could be further improved to better serve the needs of refugees and those working to help them.

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