CountrySide Mapper

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Inspiration

Part of our inspiration came from one of our team members, Belinda:

My mom is from Singapore. She was raised there in the 60s, at a time when Singapore was underdeveloped. Thus, growing up, I often heard stories of dirt roads, and outhouses. And whenever I visit Singapore now, I have the opportunity to view Indonesia from a distance and talk to some people from rural Indonesia. My family also occasionally tours rural Indonesia. However, that is because of a personal connection to the area and knowing it exists. Other people do not know of its hidden beauty.

Upon hearing this story, our team mutually agreed that we should do something to impact rural development in Indonesia. Thus, our journey began as we worked on this project. We started with research and learning about different rural development issues impacting Indonesia, specifically the lack of economic security and jobs. And the most important fruit of our research is that Indonesia is one of the world's most prolific agricultural nations. This information spurred us into our idea.

What it does

Combining our knowledge and research, we created an application focused on rural development by increasing tourism. The term is agritourism: attracting members of the public to visit agricultural operations. Our website shows various agricultural and nature sites that tourists could visit. This could also be incorporated by the local people. They can advertise events they are hosting by adding them to the website. During these events, locals can have recreation, entertainment, or educational experiences for visitors. Of course, locals are allowed and encouraged to charge tourists for their services. This will help the local economy by creating jobs and allows for cultural exchange. The sky is the limit for what locals can do with this. And our application is the platform to help them reach it.

How we built it

We decided to use what we knew in order to create something that could potentially help. Our skill sets ranged from programming in various languages such as react and node.js. However, we had to use some applications we didn’t know like firebase. Regardless, we were pleased to learn more.

Challenges we ran into

Hours of dedication lead to this final project, but it wasn’t easy. Just like other hackathon participants, we worked from different locations. However, for us, this was our first hackathon. We were unfamiliar with how to divide the work up so there was a little bit of miscommunication at the beginning where we were not all available to work on the project. For some of us, the hackathon started at 11 pm and others at 2 am. Additionally, we did have some issues with using the wrong version for some software, but those were resolved easily.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Using a map was something new for all of us, so it was exciting to see that it worked. We were also proud of the UI because we were struggling with it a little. Additionally, we had a late start so we are just happy we finished on time.

What we learned

Through our 48-hour experience, we learned a lot about Indonesia, its many islands, and rural life. However, we also learned a lot about ourselves and our skill sets. We did struggle in some places. But that just means our skills are limited and there is so much more for us to learn. We took this as a learning opportunity to enhance our skills. It was a great experience and although we are not from the area, it would be nice to visit someday.

What's next for Countryside Mapper

Because of the 48-hour time limit, we only have the application running locally. In the future, we would have to set up a server for it to run and advertise its existence to rural Indonesia as well as to the rest of the world. This could possibly be through social media or in person. Additionally, we could possibly have user accounts to keep track of favorite locations and places users have visited. Incorporating this with a social media share feature would allow the existence of our application to spread.