Churro: Empowering the Next Generation of Earners

Inspiration

As teens ourselves, we wanted to earn our own money, but we quickly realized that traditional high school employment is broken. Getting an actual job is often unfeasible due to the rigid time commitments of school, extracurriculars, and being a student. On the other hand, "neighborhood hustle" like mowing lawns or pet sitting is great, but it lacks reach and structure. It’s hard to find new "clients" beyond your immediate neighbors, and safety is a massive concern when meeting strangers. We built Churro to solve this: a structured, safe, and flexible marketplace that turns neighborhood chores into a professional stepping stone.

What it does

Churro is a specialized three-sided marketplace designed with safety as its priority:

• For Teens: Browse local tasks on an interactive map and build a digital resume of verified reviews.
• For Neighbors: Post tasks for local help, and connect with motivated teens for affordable neighborhood assistance.
• For Parents: Access a dedicated Parent Dashboard to approve task applications, monitor their teen's live progress, and track their rewards securely.

How we built it

We built Churro using a modern, scalable stack focused on real-time interaction and secure role-based data relationships:

• Frontend: Built with React (Vite) and Tailwind CSS for a responsive, intuitive, and dynamic experience that works flawlessly across devices.
• Authentication: Integrated Firebase Authentication handling Google OAuth flows to securely manage our three distinct user roles (Teen, Parent, Neighbor).
• Database & Backend: Utilized Firebase Firestore with robust, transaction-based Security Rules to manage the relational links between parents and teens.
• State & Real-Time Sync: Leveraged native Firestore onSnapshot listeners along with custom hooks (useAuth, useTasks) to push real-time task statuses, map updates, and notifications universally across the three distinct dashboards without polling.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was building the Permissions Architecture. More specifically, Churro required us to build interconnected Parent, Neighbor, and Teen accounts that worked cohesively while still sharing the right amount of information securely. This included engineering Firestore Security Rules enforcing that teens could not view neighbor addresses or start a job until a parent fully approved it. Structuring these Firestore rules to block invalid queries entirely, while allowing the dashboard maps to filter properly, was a complex balancing act of security and UX design.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are incredibly proud of our Advanced Safety Filtering Logic:

1. Dynamic Age-Gating & Curfews: Our custom JavaScript calendar and age-filtering algorithm dynamically hides dangerous tasks, like using power tools, from teens under 16, and automatically restricts task visibility based on sundown curfews.
2. Community Trust System: We implemented a secure, atomic transaction rolling-average rating algorithm that automatically guards against client-side exploitation while dynamically maintaining robust trust scores for both neighbors and teens:

$$T_{new} = \frac{(T_{current} \times n) + R}{n + 1}$$

Where:

• $R$ is the newly submitted rating (1-5 stars)
• $T_{current}$ is the user's current average rating
• $n$ is the total number of completed tasks

This ensures that all ratings scale correctly and mathematically reward consistent, high-quality community work over time.

What we learned

We learned that when building for minors, "Security is a Feature." While many consumer apps try to eliminate friction, we found that adding intentional, role-based friction can dramatically increase trust. We also deepened our database architecture skills significantly by linking dependencies securely across three disjointed user types inside NoSQL structures via Cloud Functions.

What's next for Churro

For Churro, we want to implement even deeper, more enriched security features to make sure parents can keep tabs on their teens at all times while also allowing quick and easy access to law enforcement for more dangerous situations. We also want to implement an even bigger library of tasks, and eventually, with enough users, foster a supportive community of teens, neighbors, and parents working together. Finally, we also want to add community service projects so teens can earn community service hours instead of monetary benefits.

Built With

• authentication
• cloud-functions
• css3
• eslint
• firebase
• firebase-authentication
• firebase-cloud-functions
• firebase-hosting
• firestore
• hosting)-*-**interactive-maps:**-leaflet
• html5
• javascript
• leaflet.js
• lucide-react
• node.js
• node.js-*-**frontend:**-react-18
• react-18
• react-leaflet
• react-leaflet-*-**data-visualization:**-recharts-*-**icons:**-lucide-react-*-**testing:**-vitest
• react-router-dom
• react-router-dom-*-**backend:**-firebase-(firestore-nosql
• recharts
• tailwind-css
• vite
• vitest