Lamp of Hope

Inspiration

We set out to build a clean, modern website for Lamp of Hope, a charitable organization that provides food, shelter, clean water, and other essential services. The goal was to give them an easy-to-manage platform to showcase projects, accept donations, and engage with supporters.

What it does

• Public-facing website with landing page, impact sections, and contact form
  
• Project listing with dynamic status and images
  
• Per-project donation embeds (Zeffy)
  
• Admin dashboard for managing projects
  
• Authentication system for admin users
  

How we built it

• Prompt-generated codebase using AI tools like Bolt and later Cursor
  
• Tech stack: Next.js, Tailwind, Prisma, Neon DB, NextAuth
  
• Migrated to local development for flexibility and used Vercel for deployment
  
• GitHub used for version control and CI/CD
  

Challenges we ran into

• Prisma wasn’t compatible with web containers—needed to swap ORMs temporarily
  
• Auth flow failed on Netlify, resolved by switching to Vercel
  
• Theme and layout inconsistencies (e.g., left-aligned UI, missing images)
  
• Ensuring real database sync across all project views
  

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Fully functional, database-driven site with admin tools
  
• Polished, responsive UI with minimal manual styling
  
• Deployed on Vercel with working CI/CD and environment configs
  

What we learned

• ORM compatibility matters in hosted environments
  
• Clear prompts significantly improve AI output
  
• Switching platforms can solve unexpected edge cases quickly
  

What’s next for Lamp of Hope

• Media upload support
  
• Newsletter and CRM integration
  
• Better role management
  
• Open-source and available to any charitable organization

Built With

• bolt
• cursor
• openai