Combat COVID

Our website’s mission is to create a powerful, informed community that continues to enjoy life during the crisis while keeping themselves and others safe.

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Inspiration

As teens ourselves, we were in a situation where some of our peers wouldn't understand the importance of staying quarantined or what the corona crisis is about. This helped us understand the importance of relevant, accurate information that gets the message across. Hearing about different people's struggles and the challenges they faced, we knew we had to help spread the world. Additionally, we understood the power of community and using humor to create friendships. We created combatcovid.org to help others get others the information they need to make a difference, the perspectives of other people, and a space to enjoy this time in a safe way.

What it does

First, on our website, we link teens to accurate information, because in this day and age it is necessary to find reliable sources amongst the thousands of random links. From the CDC to New York Times, our readers will know the real deal behind the crisis. But the numbers don’t mean everything; hearing people's struggles gets the message across 100 times faster. That’s why we connect readers to people’s experiences around the world. With our interactive maps, they can explore what people are going through during this time. Third, we show readers what they can do. By following simple guidelines in our “Corona Common Sense” they can be sure to make a difference, without going too far out of the way, or donate to help create change. And finally, after following precautions, members can share their own experiences. They can submit artwork, poems, podcasts, and more about their quarantine experiences or simply something that will cheer everyone up. Additionally, we launched a “healing through humor” page where our community can submit memes for a laugh. Finally, we’ve compiled a list of activities that members can engage in with their whole families.

How we built it

Theoretically, this website can be can built this website through any javascript or html template, but we chose to use a predefined template for its functionality. Our goal was to create the greatest possible impact with our experience and time frame, so this medium suited us most. We used html to embed certain features to our website.

Challenges we ran into

Brainstorming fun and engaging ways to present data was difficult. There are limited cost-effective features we can implement to truly make an impact. For example, when creating the map, we weren't sure which tools we could use because most either required extremely advanced technical expertise to code or were static images. However, searching for an alternative we were able to customize Google Maps.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being able to create a platform that educates the community in a fascinating way is our proudest accomplishment. Discovering features that lets you customize Google Maps and being able to apply these creative features was extremely enjoyable.

What we learned

We learned how to integrate different components to provide an engaging UX. We employed Google Maps and linked various sites to our website to provide a wholistic experience for users to learn about coronavirus and enjoy with their peers.

What's next for Combat COVID

We plan to increase our website's accessibility, increase internationalization, and market our our website to increase submissions in our "Healing through Humor" and "Submit Work" pages. We also want to add an option to donate to local businesses.

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