C-U At Home

Our shelters recommendation website takes personal conditions into account and offers directions to the most fitted shelters for homeless people in Champaign, IL, with any wifi-enabled devices.

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Inspiration

We are a team of four UIUC sophomore students who were inspired to apply technology to make an impact in our community. We have noticed that homelessness is a huge problem in the Urbana-Champaign area. Participating in PYGHACK 2019, we had the opportunity to analyze Champaign County homeless datasets offered by CU at Home, a local organization that supports homeless people, and develop a website that direct people in need of living spaces to the most recommended shelters as a solution.

What it does

  • Submit a Form about Personal Conditions to Find the Best Fitted Shelters for You
  • Gender, Children, Disability Status, Veteran Status
  • Text/Call C-U at Home for Emergency with Your Device
  • Directly text to or call the Emergency line of CU at Home through the website if any emergency housing issue happens.
  • Donate to C-U at Home if You Want to Support Local Community
  • Redirect donors to C-U at Home page to donate to support the life of homeless people.
  • View Data Analysis Charts of Local Homeless Survey
  • We included interesting statistical observations and interpretations generated from Point-in-Time Survey conducted by Champaign County in 2018. Here are the links to the three Tableau Dashboards we created: 1, 2, 3.

How we built it

  • Rashi Dembi and Ana Park worked on front-end, website development. We used Flask as a microframework and used it with Python to load in static HTML, CSS and Javascript files. We also created the UI for the entire project.
  • Yingan Wang worked on the dataset analysis, prototyping, and backend development using Python and R.
  • Medha Patil worked on the GoogleMaps API, data visualization, and backend development using JavaScripts.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was integrating pieces in charged by different teammates together and fit into the Flask framework. This requires high teamwork spirit and time management skills especially consider being in a hackathon.

The other one be that interpreting the stories the data tells out of the dataset, and utilizing human-centered thinking to categorize various groups of homeless people.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Become more fluent in the languages we've been using, and learning along the way of contributing to the community.
  • Making real world impact in humanitarianism with the technological background we obtained.
  • Stepping forward and thinking about further applications for a brainstorming idea

What we learned

We've learned about how to collaborate better and becoming a more agile team with tight time deadlines. We are able to carry on what we've learned to real-world applications.

What's next for A Shelters Recommendation Website for Homeless People

  • Display on MTD bus stop screens so homeless people have a higher chance of using the website by ranning into it when they are in the bus stop.
  • Develop the functionality of sending SMS messages to people not using wifi-enabled electronic devices from the website.
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