Inspiration
Those who have been-there-done-that can “pay it forward” to new immigrants and refugees. St.Louis is such a diverse and unique place in respect to immigrants and refugees. This city has built serious growth and development in struggling neighborhoods trying to make safer and better communities. Unfortunately, these communities lack the development of technologies and platforms that have their specific needs in mind. We intend to bridge that gap and allow those that have succeeded to pay it forward and give back to others.
What it does
Provides a platform where new immigrants and refugees can connect with people in their new home community. To begin the conversation we've implemented features that offer solutions to getting immigrants and refugees access to jobs, resources, and events in their community. See Gateway Forward for more information about the platform.
How we built it
The initial process began with our team getting to know one another. It was very important that despite the varied roles we all play in the building of our platform we could constantly engage one another offering feedback and ideas. The substance of that feedback is what sets our team apart from others, having multiple students that are immigrants means that we aren't creating problems or hypotheticals but actually addressing the real world problems faced by immigrants and refugees and trying to give them the platform for solutions.
Challenges we ran into
On the app development trying to solve bugs that are vague becomes repetitive and time-consuming but despite these coding challenges, our team got the job done. On the web page development, our challenges focused more on trying to create a web environment that is welcoming and user-friendly to immigrants and refugees regardless of nationality, gender, age figuring out how to frame each headline and content based on those guidelines was an easily overcomeable challenge.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
In the short time of being at Globalhack7, our team has made leaps and bounds in team building and development, we've established a functioning and presentable webpage as well as creating the base work for a corresponding app. Our development team stretched their abilities and creativity to overcome the challenge of working with people that we've never met before and we all worked extremely well together. Every member of our team is extremely proud of the work that they've done individually but more importantly collectively.
What we learned
We learned how to work with others. We learned how to push ourselves harder than we've ever pushed before. We learned so much about each other and each other's perspectives on immigrants and refugees and how we might be able to help this community.
What's next for Gateway Forward
The future of Gateway Forward will be constantly working in collaboration to create the best experience and utility for our users regardless of how bold or daunting the task might be. Gateway Forward is completely committed to making a difference in the lives of immigrants and refugees.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.