Climate Bots!

Save our Home

Comment 4

SDG's

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) our project focuses on are:

  • Climate Action
  • Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • Affordable and Clean Energy

Our website is unique as it allows youth to communicate and create a community which revolves around environmental issues. Not only are we raising awareness but our mission is to engage all demographics through our interactive features such as chat rooms with mentors, challenges and informative resources to become passionate about the SDG goals which are Climate Action, Affordable and clean energy, and Sustainable cities and communities. This would help the nations accomplish these SDG’s as once everyone is educated, involved and motivated by others, they will be encouraged to do their part. This will also benefit businesses as they can improve their CSR easily and become involved with motivated youth.

Inspiration

When we were growing up, we lacked resources which taught us about climate change. We did not know who to connect with or ask questions about saving our environment. It never seemed like a topic of concern and hence we developed bad habits; not recycling properly, leaving water running, etc. We have learned from our mistakes and we want to ensure all of our future generations learn these environmentally friendly practices from the start! Hence, we can help save our planet by taking this leap of faith!

What it does

Climate Bots is a website that enables users to create an account and develop more environmentally friendly practices. Users are able to post blogs about their experiences and any recent, relevant news. To make the website more interactive, we included a trivia game where younger children are able to learn more about the environment. The website is extremely unique in the sense that users can actually learn about climate change through the resources provided, post their own thoughts on tackling climate change and participate in chats with mentors who will support them in their own projects and endeavors in taking on the challenge to combat climate change! Overall, the impact of this website is that it will improve the environmental practices in each household and it will encourage education.

How I built it

Climate Bots is created using the Python-based Django web framework. The backend is created using Django, Python, and PHP. The front end consists of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Bootstrap. Our website has many amazing features including a Blog where users can create new posts, update old ones, and delete existing posts. You can view all posts written by a user as well. There is also a user profile where the user can change their username, email address, and/or profile picture. When a new user creates their account through the registration page, all the information is stored in an SQL database so the user is able to use their log in credentials to log in to the website. We also have a password reset option where the user is able to enter the email address associated with their account to receive a password reset link. All username and email addresses are checked to ensure that a user does not enter information that is already existing in the databases. All passwords must meet a certain set of requirements to ensure that they are strong. The Contact Us page is an interactive page that the user is able to enter their information and an email address which lets them email our organization Climate Bots. Another interactive feature we have which is very iconic to our website is the trivia game. This is created using JavaScript and is linked to our main website through a static HTML file. The amount of questions users get correct is displayed at the end of the trivia quiz. If users score above 3, a badge is automatically added to their profile and remains there! Some other features we have include a chat system where users can message other users and a calendar where live streams and events are displayed and updated in real time.

Challenges I ran into

Completing the forms and having them link to php files was very hard as we are not that familiar with them. But, through some research and independent learning, we were able to make it work. The format on CSS for the more detailed pages such as the ABOUTUS page was, at times, a little difficult, but we were able to spend a lot of time and were able to fix any of the formatting issues. Also, we all worked separately on different aspects of the website, so it was challenging to make sure that the format and text looked similar and cohesive on all the pages. Linking the forms to the website was hard, but through our team work, we were able to figure it out. One of the trickiest parts we encountered was linking the trivia quiz made using Javascript to our Python-based website. We needed to connect the variable containing the quiz points with the variable tracking the amount of points received from being an active participant by posting climate related blog posts together. By troubleshooting, using our excellent research skills, and logical thinking we were able to overcome this problem and display the corresponding badges on the users’ profiles.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We were able to successfully complete a website in less than 24 hours in which users are actually able to sign up and login. This is the second time that many of us are using HTML or CSS in projects which makes it something that we are very proud of. Furthermore, we were able to add an interactive game, which made our website much more interesting to users. However, beyond the technical development, we are proud that we were able to think of a unique idea and work together as a team to create an incredible and useful platform. Climate Bots has the potential to change millions of lives and our climate because of its goals. By educating our youth, we can as a community work towards preventing taking actions that lead to climate change!

What I learned

This was one of our first hackathons so we were able to learn a lot. In terms of applying our knowledge, we were able to create a website that interacts with users. We learned many skills from the workshops such as deploying a website and enhanced our technical skills especially in HTML, CSS, JS, Bootstrap, and PHP. We also learned how to accommodate our webpage based on user interface instead of our time and effort. We considered this as a product and were able to consider three important components; desirability, feasibility and viability while creating it. Hence, we developed strong technical and product management skills.

What's next for Climate Bots

Climate Bots has a powerful mission and we hope to continue to use this platform and connect with youth from across the world. In our initial stages currently, we will network on various social media platforms and find parents, children and schools interested in partnering with us to help teach the youth. We will also plan out new content to keep updating the website weekly so the youth can always continue learning something new about helping our environment and receive more badges as an incentive for their extraordinary hard work! In the future, we hope to conduct workshops and educate individuals in rural and remote areas on climate change as well. We also plan to launch an ambassador program to have students and adults market the platform to create a sustainable and healthy future!

Share this project:

Updates