Foster Finder

Our goal with this project is to help create a strong community between foster parents by allowing them to network through our website. We want to assist them in the process of fostering a child.

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What it does

The purpose of Foster Finder is to provide a networking and educational platform for foster parents to connect with representatives, organizations, and other parents; get involved in the community; and enrich a child’s life by providing resources, ultimately to foster happiness.

How we built it

The majority of our project was created using Next.js for the frontend and the API backend, Firebase for the database and authentication backend, and Postman to test the API.

What's next for Foster Finder

In the near future, we hope to implement the following: Live chat support for representatives to assist parents Connect parents with other foster parents with a follow feature Login feature for foster kids to post their profiles and get in touch with other foster kids Contact organizations and foster homes to have them list events that people can get involved in.

Challlenges we ran into

In the frontend part of the project, there were multiple styling and sizing issues resulting in the superposition of multiple components, offset of their placement and awkward color choices. Most issues relating to the frontend were solved using the Flex component from Chakra UI and making use of the flex box property. We also ran into major problems with the backend. This was mainly surrounding integrating our project with Firebase and sending POST requests to the backend which we solved by using Postman to test our API extensively.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The biggest accomplishments that we're proud of is the authentication system that makes use of Google Firebase enabling you to be able to login through Google. The way we implemented authentication enables us to expand the login options to include other popular methods. Moreover, the ability to connect and interact with other people build the foundation of what our web app means not only to us but to our community.

What we learned

We went from knowing almost nothing about React and Next to becoming fairly familiar with it. It was a major learning experience for the first-time hackers in our group. We also expanded our overall knowledge about JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Best of all, we learned a lot about foster families and are proud that we came up with a solution to help them.

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