Inspiration
Tertiary education is incredibly essential today, yet many still struggle to afford it. Scholarships that were meant to alleviate this pain, are often given out to students that might not necessarily be in need of them, and are insanely difficult to get. This hole in meritocracy often leads to the constant marginalisation of the poor, denying them possible opportunities and ensnaring them in the cycle of poverty. We seek to democratise this process, creating a solution that would help connect needy students and potential donors more efficiently, and hence ensuring that all Singaporeans, regardless of background, can enjoy the fruits of an inclusive education system.
What it does
F'undergrad is a web app that helps connect underprivileged students with potential donors. It is, in a sense, a crowdfunding platform for the less fortunate students.
Students can create profiles to attract donors who might be willing to sponsor them on a 1 to 1 basis. Students can also decide to register for crowdfunded funds, and be allocated a certain portion of the fund if they meet the requirements.
Donors on the other hand, can look for needy students that they want to help out, or simply donate any amount to whichever fund they might be interested in, knowing that every little bit will go towards furthering someone's education.
How we built it
We built our prototype using reactJS.
Challenges we ran into
We did not have time to setup and connect a backend to our frontend, and ended up using dummy data. We were also unable to setup the PayNow API and Singpass API, as both require some form of payment and/or government permission, which we did not have the money to pay for or time to request for permission.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Coming into this hackathon, we were all rather inexperienced in software engineering. But after 24 hours, we have definitely learnt a lot about the process and its intricacies, and have become more experienced, to say the least.
We are also proud to build a platform that is aimed to aid others in the fight against their struggles, and hope that in the future, we can release this platform to help the marginalised in Singapore.
What we learned
We learnt a lot about the financial struggles of underprivileged students. Student debt takes on average 10-20 years to clear, putting an incredible amount of financial stress on students even after they graduate.
On the technical side, we learnt a lot about front end development, with React in particular. We learnt stuff like dynamic styles and localStorage, pretty cool stuff.
What's next for F'Undergrad
As mentioned earlier, we were unable to connect to a backend. We would love to try that out in the future, and properly fetch dynamic data from a real database. We would also like to try implementing Google's OAuth, allowing users to log in with their Google account.
We would also properly set up the PayNow API given sufficient funds, and also set up the Singpass API upon being granted permission from the government.
Exploring the use of smart contracts on our blockchain would also be interesting. This would increase the security of out platform, leaning more towards a decentralised and trustless system.
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