Building Bridges

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  Building Bridges for a better tomorrow

Inspiration

The coronavirus crisis has halted the world as we know it and affected more people than we ever thought possible. Every day, millions across the world are suffering the devastating economic consequences of the lockdown. We are inspired by the resilience of humankind in such a situation and we want to help individuals & families living in difficult conditions due to their sudden lack of income. We have the chance and opportunity to make things better now and in the future, and we hope to inspire you with our project to do so.

What it does

The platform identifies the jobs in which the user would be a good fit considering his/her demographics, experience, education level, skills, localization etc. The job offers comes from individuals living around the user (same locality) who need assistance, or from small & big businesses alike. Our users can therefore find income-generating activities during the lock down in to ease the financial pressure they live under. The platform also provides recommendations on what online courses and workshops the user can take to be a better fit for the target job. To help them with their career development, head-hunters volunteers will provide them online guidance.

How we built it

Our idea is currently in the conceptual stage but is simple to implement. Our platform is similar to the market places that we see online, like LinkedIn or Amazon, but with very simple features so that it be easily built and distributed rapidly during the crisis.

Challenges we ran into

Our team did not have any designer or app/web developer so we were not able to build a prototype and test our solution. We believe that the conceptual phase is simple enough to understand as is, and we aim to develop a very basic app so it can be done quickly and without much means.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

Our accomplishment during this challenge was to come up with a practical solution despite the short timeframe and team size. We explored the problem in length and were able to identify many problems; we believe our solution would have a lasting positive impact on all those who lost their jobs in the crisis.

What we learned

We learned how a diverse team of people can approach a problem from different perspectives. Furthermore, it was very helpful to have supportive mentors during the project. They provided feedback and gave the project direction, especially when we could not narrow down the issue to one topic only.

What's next for Building Bridges

Our next step is to find developers who are willing to collaborate on our project. We need to build and test our prototype with real users in a small locality/zone. Then, we need to secure funding to scale the project along with adding more team members from technology and marketing backgrounds. Once a prototype is built, we need to build partnerships with municipalities & institutions to develop the volunteers base needed for our solution.