Friend In Need

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  friend in need

Inspiration

Many women and girls around the world face challenges in accessing menstrual hygiene products, which can lead to missing school or work, health problems, and social stigma. This is especially true for refugees and other marginalized communities, who may not have access to basic necessities like clean water and sanitary facilities. Women often lack information and resources available to manage their periods safely and effectively.

What it does

Friend in Need is a mobile app that aims to address these issues by connecting women in need of menstrual hygiene products with nearby supportive allies who can provide them. The app is based on the principles of community support and empathy, and encourages users to help one another in times of need.

Through the app, users can search for nearby users who are willing to provide menstrual hygiene products, and can rate and review the quality of the overall experience. Then the person in need of menstrual hygiene products (or "the requester") can choose to either pay the helper through Venmo or donate the amount to a charity in need. Moreover, users can find information on nearby restrooms and their quality, as well as tips on reproductive health and menstrual hygiene.

Friend in Need aims to increase equity by providing access to menstrual hygiene products and information to those who may not have it otherwise, and by fostering a sense of community and support among women.

How we built it

We created the app using Angular framework and hosted it in the app engine in google cloud platform. Angular is a javascript framework and we used typescript to write our javascript code. For the templating we used html and css. In the future we intend to connect it to an api which would again be connected to a database.

Challenges we ran into

From the domain perspective since we, the teammates are women, we all had the experience of not having feminine hygiene products at a place outside the confines of our house once in a while in our life and we did not have access to public restrooms either. Some establishments during certain festivals or occasions are not generous enough to open the doors of their establishment to the general public. Therefore it was not hard to feel the problem to find a solution. However we have never had the opportunity to understand the problems refugee ladies experience while trying to access menstrual hygiene products. Therefore we had a challenge there. During the ideation process we had to do some reading on our own and imagine the problems we might have to face in such precarious situations. From the technical perspective, collaboration and merging into the repository on git was an issue. Angular did not pose much of a learning curve for the team mates. In between a teammate was also disconnected. Delegation, ideation and implementation by ladies and some of us have families and children to take care of, which was not an insurmountable problem but we got over it with careful planning.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have developed applications to address the critical problem of lack of access to sanitary products and to significantly benefit the lives of women and girls. We are also thrilled with designing an intuitive interface that facilitates community support and compassion. More importantly, we are pleased to incorporate features such as Venmo payments, charitable contributions, and resources on reproductive health and menstrual hygiene in order to enhance the overall user experience. By creating a platform to address this critical issue, facilitating product access, and providing relevant health information, we aim to empower every woman and girl to confidently and hygienically manage their menstruation.

What we learned

During the development of Friend in Need, we learned a lot about the challenges that women and girls face in accessing necessary products and the importance of community support in addressing these challenges. We also gained valuable experience in designing and developing a mobile app, including creating a user-friendly interface and integrating various features such as a search function, rating system, and review system with Angular that can handle user inputs. Finally, we developed skills in project management and collaboration, as we worked together to meet project milestones and communicate effectively during the 48 hours of hacking.

What's next for FriendInNeed

In the future, we intend to continue improving the app's functionality and design based on user feedback. We also plan to expand the app's availability to other communities in need and look for additional partnerships with organizations working towards women equity. We will explore strategies to diversify revenue or develop a profit model, such as offering premium features or sponsorships, in order to sustain the app's impact and reach. Our ultimate goal is to make menstrual hygiene products and information more accessible and equitable for all women and girls.

NB use haileeVenmo username and any password to access the app.

Built With

• angular.js