Inspiration
Over 100k people in Canada were unhoused in 2022, with 30% of them identifying as indigenous. Many of these people may find themselves unable to escape poverty due to systematic barriers standing in their way, one of which is the growing digital divide between employers and those without access to phones. Connecting these underprivileged groups with resources that could get them cell phone could allow for them to seek continued education, or find stable employment, helping uplift them out of tough situations, and potentially save a life if it enabled for access to emergencies services in a timely manner. A secondary motivation is that allowing people to more directly see the recipients of their donations through profiles might help dispel harmful stigmas and preconceived notions about the unhoused. An amazing side effect of this would be the recirculation of phones, as opposed to them being thrown into landfills, which is very important when you consider that an estimated 5 billion phones contributed to e-waste in 2022.
What it does
Access Mobile enables people with old phones to donate their unneeded phone to underprivileged individuals in their community, and allows anyone to donate toward the cellular plan of individuals or toward a general fund which goes toward funding the cellular plan of those in need.
How we built it
- Amazon RDS Postgres Database.
- Django Backend webserver, with Django templated HTML CSS.
- MDB Web UI framework.
Challenges we ran into
Time constraints and lack of experience with the relevant technologies proved to be challenging, along with lack of experience integrating these unique technologies to make a cohesive product in such a short timeframe.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We made an idea that we are extremely proud of, we truly believe that unhoused and financially instable groups in Canada could use much more help and attention than they currently receive. This idea seems to be truly unique and out of the box. On the Technical side, we are very proud of the progress we made in such a short amount of time with such a small team made up of three different majors (Eng, Comp Sci, Physics).
What we learned
We learned a lot about Django and Amazon RDS, along with the true scale of homelessness in Canada and its extremely disproportionate impacts of the first nations communities in Canada.
What's next for Access Mobile
The next step would be registering as a non profit, getting the word out through advertisements or word of mouth, and reaching out to industries that give their employees or clients phones and attempting to secure their old models as donations when they upgrade.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.