Inspiration behind Heart Central
As volunteers ourselves, we've often encountered challenges in sifting through numerous organisations and opportunities to find those that align with our interests, skills, and availability. This difficulty in finding suitable volunteer opportunities can be discouraging and may hinder our willingness to engage in volunteering activities. On the other hand, volunteer administrators face their own set of challenges, including the recruitment and management of volunteers (Hager & Brudney, 2004). Additionally, coordinating the activities of volunteers who have signed up requires a significant amount of time and effort. Recognising these challenges, our group has identified the need to develop a cost-effective system. This system aims to facilitate volunteer enrollment, activity management, and certificate requests for volunteers, while also providing nonprofit administrators with efficient tools for handling forms, attendance records, and generating detailed reports. Our objectives are categorised into two groups, targeting both volunteers and administrators. For volunteers, our aim is to develop a simple and intuitive platform that simplifies the sign-up process. Additionally, we aim to personalise volunteer opportunity suggestions to align with individual interests, as well as track sign-ups to help volunteers manage their upcoming and past activities. For administrators, our goal is to create a template that allows organisations to create sign-up forms to capture important volunteer information. We also aim to streamline features to simplify administrative tasks such as coordinating contact details, tracking attendance, and managing certificate requests.
How we built Heart Central
Our project, Heart Central, is a React web application built with TypeScript and styled using CSS. We utilised Firebase authentication for user authentication and the Firestore database to store details regarding users and opportunities.
What Heart Central does
This platform serves to enhance the visibility of volunteer opportunities, thereby promoting volunteering among members of society. Additionally, it enhances work flow by automating tasks such as manually coordinating administrative resources. This efficiency not only improves overall productivity but also enhances the quality of volunteer activity coordination. Furthermore, the web application facilitates communication and collaboration, providing a centralised platform where organisations and volunteers can easily connect, leveraging strengths and resources within the community.
What's next for Heart Central
Moving forward, we hope to work on three main areas. Firstly, we plan to integrate the system into a mobile application to enhance accessibility. Secondly, we aim to create a page for logging volunteer history, facilitating future registrations based on past experiences. Lastly, we intend to enhance the platform's algorithm to accurately tailor volunteering opportunities based on each volunteer's profile. Additionally, we will implement custom notifications based on past volunteering experiences to encourage participation in newly-posted activities. Finally, we will implement notifications to remind users of upcoming volunteer opportunities they have registered for.
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