CRI (Combating Rising Islamophobia)

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  Combating Rising Islamophobia

Inspiration

Being here at UMich, we've heard racist comments about certain racial/ethnic groups and wanted to form a solution to combat it. From a first-year writing course talking about how race affects how people are treated and from things we learned about social justice in our UROP community-engaged research seminars, we thought that education is often one of the best ways to combat existing prejudice. Because Muslims also only make up 5% of the total college student population in the U.S., it's important to give them an avenue to connect. Therefore, we decided to create a platform, CRI, where people could learn about ways Islamophobia has negatively impacted Muslims and gives Muslims and people who have experienced discrimination on campus resources to help them navigate these things.

What it does

Because we believe that education is one of the best ways to combat racism, discrimination, and prejudice, a lot of the features on CRI are targeted towards providing more education about Islamic news and addressing common misconceptions people have that may cause them to have a negative perception of Islam. We have a Misconception and a News section for people to be updated on current events. We have a section for campus resources, where people can select their college and see what resources there may be on campus, and we also have other resources linked for those who are experiencing a lack of support on campus. We have a place for people to search for scholarships specifically designated to support Muslim students. We have educational modules people can use if they want to advance their understanding of Islam. We also have a place for Muslim college students to connect online, meet, and support each other.

How we built it

We built it using HTML, CSS, and React through Replit and called various APIs to manage news updates and scholarship displays.

Challenges we ran into

Navigating a specific problem to address, Narrowing news down to what was relevant for Muslim populations, deciding which features would actually be useful/of value

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building this in a short amount of time, identifying real problems to be solved across college campuses, narrowing our target audience down to helping college students, identifying and using existing resources to help Muslim populations.

What we learned

We learned to hone our coding skills with HTML and CSS and how to use API keys to get the most recent news stories. We researched effective ways to combat discrimination and what resources can help minority populations on campus.

What's next for CRI (Combating Rising Islamophobia)

Finishing alpha testing, recruiting people at U-M to give feedback on it, making adjustments due to feedback, and then official release (form a partnership with clubs and orgs here as well).

Built With

• css
• html
• javascript
• react
• replit