Inspiration
Being among the 360 million people living in rented accommodation spaces in sub-Saharan Africa, having the money to pay the rental fees for the month of March is going to be hard. I come from Uganda and most people in the slum areas especially around the capital city, Kampala, live from hand to mouth. With a partial lockdown in place, getting the next meal is the current struggle and to add on to this, landlords still expect to be paid monthly rental fees. However, to my surprise, my landlord gave me a call only just yesterday and told me would spare me of the payment expected for this current month and the foreseeable future since he understood my predicament as it was a shared one. The extreme feeling of happiness this brought to me made me believe that there are more landlords with this kind of mentality but because most of their tenants are even afraid of making that phone call, those without access to credit will not survive this pandemic. Unlike other countries, developing countries like Uganda have poorly updated databases in the Ministry of Housing showing tenants and their respective landlords. Bridging this existing gap is monumental and needs leveraging existing social media platforms that have a wide reach to be able to match up tenants and their landlords.
What it does
We are Asante look to use online volunteers to reach out to tenants greatly affected by the prevailing lockdown in Kampala, Uganda. These tenants will then be required to provide their personal information as well as the contact information of their landlords with confidentiality contracts provided. Asante will as well request information, through an online form, from the tenants regarding their main source of income and preliminary investigations will be carried out about the tenants' need for a waiver on rental fees. We are Asante will then reach out to the various landlords with a well-framed and balanced explanation of the current economic situation, how it is affecting their tenants and themselves as well. Asante is looking to gather a variety of potential rewards including certificates of appreciation and Lifetime Medals of Honour with internationally recognized organizations as signatories that are working together in the battle against Covid19 including the WHO(World Health Organisation). With even less than 10% of these landlords accepting such an arrangement, we would have saved more than 1 million people in Uganda from financial doom.
How I built it
I used an HTML5 template off the internet and using PyCharm Community Edition Editor, I was able to modify the Html, PHP and Javascript files to develop a website that could have the functionality to perform the functions. I was able to develop a form online using Google Forms that will help us in the tenant acquisition process.
Challenges I ran into
The creation of a secure form has proved challenging to be challenging. I had earlier thought of incorporating a chatbot to be able to handle tenants but this was too advanced for my programming skills. Having a teammate who could help in the development of such an AI-powered chatbot to extract information from the tenants would ease the process and make it more streamlined.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am happy I was able to generate some code using HTML as well as PHP to make the website as interactive as possible. I was able to present using OBS software that helps display my screen while showing my webcam. I am proud of myself for being able to get actual statistics regarding the total number of people living in rented households in Kampala metropolitan district in Uganda. I was able to as well get access to an online register of registered landlords in the district and this would be a good starting point in terms of proceeding with onboarding landlords onto our system. I was able to link a secure database to the website so that affected tenants can input their information securely and we can use this to assess and provide an unbiased statement on their financial need.
What I learned
What has really shocked me is the number of people in Kampala alone living in rented accommodation spaces. It was much larger than I had earlier anticipated and such a crisis exposes all these people to tough financial decisions. I have never participated in a hackathon as well and I didn't know my programming skills could help me produce such an effective Minimum Viable Prototype.
What's next for Asante
We are Asante needs hosting for its website, development of a secure database that can help us safely store tenant information, onboarding of stakeholders like Facebook, other international companies as well as local government entities to endorse the proposed certificates of appreciation and as well provide any other gifts if possible. We are Asante needs a call center run by its volunteers to try to reach as many landlords as possible.
Asante requires mass advertising through various platforms like Facebook and Google to reach as many affected tenants and landlords as possible. The problem Asante is facing is not only here in Uganda but is a global conundrum. Most governments in developing countries are not able to provide stimulus packages to their citizens and this leaves them naked. Helping each other is the only way to go through this and this is exactly what Asante through its online volunteers, wants to leverage. We will be able to provide employment to many people who are stuck at home in our various processes including identification of affected tenants, quick financial analysis of their state of financial need, onboarding of willing landlords and creation of the reward packages to the helpful landlords. Asante operations have minimal human contact maintaining social distancing principles that will help us defeat this pandemic.
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