5Care

Team Information

Project Title: 5Care ~ We Grow Together~
Team member: Pine Netcharussaeng, Catherine Byen, Alison Tu, Grace Chang

Outline

5Care is a website for students to share resources and fundraise for mutual aids. Our project falls under the Sustainable Earth track and we have chosen the "Beginner" overlay. We utilized Javascript, HTML, and CSS to develop our website and used WIX website creator for our website prototype. Overall, our project represents our efforts to build a more sustainable and equitable future.

The purpose is to centralize all mutual aid requests, fundraising, and recycling through selling items and art. We want to solve the problem of disorganized mutual aid requests on social media, while also addressing the problem of waste through increasing accessibility to secondhand items. By allowing students to give away items or sell items for mutual aid purposes, we hope to contribute to waste reduction while facilitating fundraising in the 5Cs for both receivers and donors.

To use the website, students can post their mutual aid requests on the “Mutual Aid” page. Community members will be able to view all the requests on our simple interface at a glance, and it can be sorted by due date to help prioritize time-sensitive requests. Students can also post their items for free (donation) or sale on the “Item” page, and put their art for sale on the “Art” page. On the receiving end, sellers can donate any desired portion of their revenue to mutual aid purposes. Our website will also allow for “ISO,” a feature for students to search for items in need. Users will be able to toggle between buy, sell, or ISO, as well as a sliding scale for price range. All these features aim to make sharing resources in the 5Cs more convenient.

We hope to engage with as much of the population as possible while also normalizing the practice of community care.

Ethics

Our product is designed to assist 5C students in need, providing both financial and non-financial aid. By reselling second-hand items for mutual aid, we aim to promote recycling and help the Earth. Our product is intended to benefit both students and the environment.

However, it is important to acknowledge that our website is specifically targeted towards the 5C student community and may exclude individuals outside of this group who may also require assistance. This limitation could potentially prevent us from raising funds for people who need it the most. Additionally, a potential risk associated with our website is the possibility of illegitimate causes being presented as mutual aid posts. This could lead to students unknowingly donating to fraudulent causes.

In order to mitigate this risk, we must assess the legitimacy of each mutual aid post before approving it for the website. However, this process could delay the allocation of urgently needed funds to those in need. Therefore, we must rely on trust within the 5C community to ensure that the website is used appropriately. While this trust has the potential to be both beneficial and harmful, we remain committed to ensuring that our website promotes only legitimate causes and serves as a valuable resource for the 5C community.