Heall

our homepage

Inspiration

Young girls all over the world suffer a stigma regarding talking about health issues. A young Syrian refugee girl around the age 16 has many obstacles, for example, not knowing the language, not having the right support, doesnt go to school and is in this ()culture. so we want to connect her with professional who speak her language. We know that health is important, so being able to educate yourself is essential. A young Syrian girl around the age 16 should be able to know about resources around her and be able to talk to professionals who can help her.

What it does

Heall(Health Ally) is a way to empower women through health education and mentoring. It is a tool for young women, especially refugees, that have to overcome issues related to their bodies, such as sexism, domestic violence, rape, and lack of guidance/taboo.

The app connects young women who feel like they don't have support around them to learn about sexual and mental related issues with volunteer female gynecologists around the world. The topics that are open for discussion are safe sex, puberty, STDs, rape defense, pregnancy and mental health, but the conversation is free to go wherever the two feel comfortable with.

The website is anonymous and has a "masked" model for the young girls (in which only they have the key to see the conversations or even what the app is about), since it's known that in some cultures, many in which refugees are a part of, are not comfortable or even allowed to talk about sex. The chat is free, according to their preferences in these mediums of communication, like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.

The app connects the user with people from around the world, and translate the conversation in real time for both the young girls and the health professionals, so they can overcome the language barrier.

As they take ownership of their bodies and sexual education by finding a nurturing, safe, anonymous and professionalized environment in Heall, the empowers themselves and can help achieve a better and safer future.

How I built it

Ruby on Rails app Google Cloud Translator API to translate the messages Active Job for the chat

Challenges I ran into

Using Google APIs is always a challenge, and the lack of time and team size made sure that we didn't stop coding for a second.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

What I learned

What's next for heall

Mobile App
Volunteers (given the authorization) have access to a list of the nearest hospital of the young girls they mentor, if she needs to intervene in any way.
Website is fully translated according to your language