Laila

Inspiration

We were inspired by the speakers that presented before the hackathon. In particular, the idea of having someone to look to for inspiration and a reason to continue education resonated with us. Additionally, we loved the idea of generating a community of people that care. We know that a lot of people want to help refugees, but don't have the money or time to do so. Laila makes it easy for anyone to have an immediate impact.

What it does

Laila connects mentors and refugees with help from the Twilio API. Mentors sign up through the web app and supply information about themselves such as which languages they speak and where they're from. Laila then suggests refugees to them that speak the same language and are looking for support. Refugees may sign up and supply information about themselves entirely through a series of SMS messages. Once connected, mentors and mentees can communicate via our online chat server (for the mentor) and via SMS (for mentees). Mentors are encouraged to ask questions about refugees' education and engage them in conversations about learning.

How we built it

Twilio API, JavaScript, Python

Challenges we ran into

Lots of asynchronous work when making a chat server and using the Twilio API.

Built With

• javascript
• jquery
• md5
• python
• twilio