HelperUpper

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  Main Screen

Inspiration

After hearing each non-profit's presentation, Team HelperUpper decided that the most feasible, and also most exciting project, would be Understanding Poverty's proposal for a "Yelp for Impoverished Individuals". With backgrounds working on social-impact mobile apps (including a similar project for homeless individuals called Home App), this was the perfect problem for this team to tackle.

What it does

HelperUpper allows users to access and review resources ranging from Jobs to Non-Profit Help, from Events/Activities (particularly for children) to Coupons/Discounts. This can be done from clients for both iOS and Android.

How we built it

The backend is built in Node.js using Express and Firebase. The frontend is built using React Native, which compiles natively for both iOS and Android. A variety of libraries, such as AirBNB's react-native-maps, were also utilized. Our demo server was tunneled through ngrok.

Challenges we ran into

Every error imaginable on both sides of the project, both in terms of spelling mistakes and unresolved errors with the compatibility of react-native packages with the current version of react-native.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a fully-functional live app after hours of being completely lost.

What we learned

As always, more about the frameworks and tools that we used, as well as the way apps can be structured for use by potentially non-technical users.

What's next for HelperUpper

Hosting the server online, finishing development of Event Maps (dependent on issue resolution of react-native-maps), and beginning public deployment!

Built With

• amazon-web-services
• express.js
• firebase
• javascript
• node.js
• react-native