Inspiration
With our collective interest in fashion, our team was inspired by the pollution caused by the fast fashion industry. Millions of garments, even those that are in good condition, are thrown away in landfills each year, contributing to the overall climate crisis. These can instead go to people in desperate need of clothing to minimize excessive waste. Many second-hand brands such as Goodwill, throw out. We created Cozy Connections to provide a way for users to not only directly donate their old clothing to people who need it, but to also minimize waste caused by the clothing industry and implement sustainability into their lifestyles.
What it does
Individuals who are looking to donate their used clothing answer a brief survey on our website and are matched to families or individuals who are in need of the type of clothing that they provide. Based on the survey responses, our website also recommends the nearest clothing drop-off location for the donor(s).
How we built it
The backend, which includes the database and the code that searches the input from the user, matching it with the dataset was created with Python. We created an example dataset for our project submission. The backend for the Questionnaire page was created with JavaScript, which creates a list from the inputs received from the user. The frontend was made with HTML and CSS.
Challenges we ran into
We weren’t able to connect the results page of our website (which generates matches to recipients and nearest dropoff location) to respond based on the user input from the questionnaire page. Some of the challenges we encountered were connecting the JavaScript file and our Python file to use the user input in JavaScript to our Python processing file. The goal was to have our JavaScript store the user input into a list, which will be compared against our created dataset that we made for the purpose of this challenge, sorting through the data using Python to match the donor to people who need clothing.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Taking inspiration from a sustainability issue that each of our team members felt passionate about and creating an aesthetically-pleasing, functioning solution that can be applied to our everyday lives is an accomplishment that we are immensely proud of!
What we learned
We learned how to create websites with HTML and CSS, and acquired the knowledge needed to connect our backend code to our frontend code.
What's next for Cozy Connections
As a next step, we want to fine-tune the backend for our website to successfully utilize our questionnaire responses to sort through data from various charities, organizations, and NGOs and match donors with a greater number of recipients in need. We would also like to add a rewards program, where donors are incentivized to donate more through gamification, where one can progress through different ‘levels’ and earn more points to redeem the more they donate.
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