Back 'em!

Back 'em

Inspiration

The streets of Toronto are packed with homeless people. Civilians usually give them change to help them out with their daily needs but we are gradually leading towards a cashless economy and people generally don't carry cash around anymore. To eradicate this problem, we would like to include the less fortunate in our daily digital money transactions.

What it does

Back 'em is a combination of a mobile and web app. The mobile app allows civilians to transfer funds to a virtual account created for the homeless people. Money is only requested from their account when it is used at a certified shelter or restaurant. The web app registers the name and picture of a homeless person to create a database.

How we built it

We used Android App Dev for the Mobile App and Vue JS for the Web App. API calls were made to the Microsoft's Face API Platform in order to detect and verify the homeless person's face for authentication. Firebase was used to store the data of a homeless and person and use it to keep a log of money transfers made to the homeless person's virtual entry in the database.

Challenges we ran into

Low data available on homeless people. Homeless people don't really use mobile devices or bank accounts which is why a database had to be created and a web app for face recognition.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we thought of helping out people who can't own digital devices due to shortage of money instead of only people who own mobile devices. For us, connected living is being inclusive of everyone living in this city.

What we learned

Being CS students, we are still in the process of learning and evolving and getting to work with some absolutely new technologies was a great learning experience! Whether it was using Axios for the first time or integrating the frontend with the backend, or if it was solving merge commits for hours! The team spirit was unmatched. It was an experience worth cherishing!!