Advocacy

Inspiration:

With the current events occurring around the world that revolve around the principle of protest. With two of our members' roots tied to a nation that is currently going through systematic change, we felt a necessity to create a project that embodies the principle of protest. With the demand for justice not only across our nation, but rather the whole world, we wanted to create an application that allows people to express their opinions. Whether it's informing other comrades about where the next planned protest is going to be held, to holding companies accountable for their actions by listing them on a boycott tracker leaderboard.

What it does

Our application is a central hub for protest and advocacy efforts. Comrades can view and add protest locations on an interactive map of PA. This map also has the ability to record details like the neighborhood, description, and attendance. Our application also keeps track of companies that comrades want to boycott, and we implemented a leaderboard system that also features a comment section. The more votes that a company has from users, the higher the company goes on the leaderboard. This ultimately spreads the mission to spread the word and share/collaborate with other users to raise awareness and coordinate participation.

How we built it

We built using several languages, including Python, SQL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We also incorporated the usage of APIs throughout our application to complete both our mission and values. These forms of technology allowed our application to be made.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we faced was managing data across multiple systems. Integrating user-submitted information into different databases while maintaining consistency was tricky, especially when combining SQL with Flask for backend logic and making sure it was smooth with the frontend. We also struggled with the accuracy of neighborhood data when relying on third-party APIs, which sometimes returned inconsistent or incomplete results. On top of that, coordinating contributions across multiple team members in Visual Studio posed version control and workflow difficulties.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to build an application that embodies the values of justice and liberty. Most importantly, we are proud that we have formalized and built an application that actually helps real people. Furthermore, as a team, we are proud to have been able to work through challenges and new technologies that may have impacted our relationship with each other. Although our application may not be perfect, we have learned quite a lot in our journey.

What we learned

We learned many things, but in order to complete our project, it is essential to work as a team in communicating issues/concerns and also splitting tasks equally to make sure we work effectively as a team. We also learned how to design pages that were designed less on functionality but rather on inclusivity and accessibility for all. We also learned how to hurdle through challenges when working on technologies that we have yet to have experience with.

What's next for Advocacy

There are many steps that we are willing to take for the future. One of them is implementing a friending system that allows users to connect with others. Similarly, we would like to incorporate the whole world in order not to limit our users to the United States/East Coast. Finally, we would like to make the site even more user-friendly in terms of technical design.