How2Help

Inspiration

I was researching the problems the Bronx faces trying to find a solution to one of the problems when I realized the community of the Bronx knows best on what they need so I should shape my idea around supporting that and so I made this app to make it easier to volunteer as this would get more people involved helping each other out and in turn, strengthen the community.

What it does

On opening the app for the first time, it gets your location and looks for the closest charities near you and uses AI to generate a small description and to categorize them into Food, Health, Education or Other to help the user apply their skillsets or find what part they want to play in helping their community.

How we built it

The app was made with React Native which has a backend written in Nodejs that uses the Google Places API to find charities near you, along with providing the map view and using OpenAI to generate the description and categorize the charities.

Challenges we ran into

This was the first time I've used React Native and OpenAI, getting React Native to work was relatively easy but exporting to a downloadable format (apk) took me an entire day to get right.

Also getting OpenAI to consistently return JSON data in a consistent format which my backend can use has also proved to be a challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I have never made a phone app before or used AI so making something that uses both in just 1 week has been very fun learning it all.

What we learned

Aside from tech-y things, I've learned the problems the Bronx faces such as technology being further behind than the rest of the country.

The Bronx has the lowest broadband adoption rates of any borough and the disparities are even more pronounced at the neighborhood level, with 38% of The Bronx not having access to broadband.

(https://thebronx.org/digital-equity/)[source]

The techy things I've learned:

• How AI prompting works & asking for a consistent format for returned data
• How mobile apps work

What's next for How2Help

I want to make the loading times a lot quicker as every request asks for a whole new set of descriptions from OpenAI, I'll do this by storing the descriptions & category on places that have already been analyzed.

I also want to improve my AI to find an easy way to donate to charities through the app in case the user doesn't want to volunteer.

Download the app

To download the app go to the 'try it out' link and on your phone (only supported on android at the moment) go to 'Initial Release' on the right, and download the release.apk file and then open the file and install it, and then you can open it and use it.

Built With

• google-maps
• openai
• react