Lantern

Home page: a quick overview of Lantern and the support available to users.
Home page continued
Button that is always available to the user to get help now
Reach out to your Safety Circle when you feel unsafe, overwhelmed, or just need someone you trust to check in.
Quickly prepare an urgent alert with your location so your trusted contacts know you may need immediate help.
Quickly choose what kind of support you need so Lantern can guide you toward the most relevant next step
Learn to recognize different forms of domestic, sexual and digital abuse.
Join anonymous group conversations based on shared experiences, where users can support each other without revealing their identity.
Read and share short anonymous messages that remind users they are not alone and that others may have gone through similar experiences.
Add trusted contacts and quickly prepare an emergency message when you feel unsafe.
Privately describe what's happening in your own words to get guidance on what your situation may involve, what support options could help.
A preview of how users can securely save their progress while remaining anonymous publicly

Inspiration

In many Asian countries, sexual, domestic and digital abuse can still be overlooked or not openly talked about, even though abuse is much more common than people realize. Around 1 in 3 women globally experience physical or sexual violence, yet many may not immediately recognize what they are experiencing as abuse. We wanted to create a space where people can learn what these behaviors look like, support each other anonymously and feel safer taking their next step.

What it does

Lantern is support platform that helps people recognize and understand domestic, sexual and digital abuse, access clear educational resources, anonymously connect with others, find support services, build a trusted Safety Circle and quickly prepare emergency messages when they feel unsafe. Users can choose their preferred language, making critical safety information more accessible to people who may not speak English confidently.

How we built it

We built Lantern as a web app using React, JavaScript, CSS and Vite, with separate components for education, community support, saved progress and the Safety Circle. As we are mostly first-year students with limited coding experience, we used ChatGPT Plus and Claude to help us with the coding process.

Challenges we ran into

This is our first hackathon, so developing a product like this for the first time was challenging. We also changed our idea multiple times because some versions felt too generic while others were too niche, so we had to keep refining Lantern and finding ways to make it different from platforms like SafeYOU, Bright Sky and Chayn.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to turn a sensitive and difficult problem into a working platform that brings education, anonymous community support and safety tools together in one place. We are also proud that we focused on privacy from the start, making sure users can seek support without needing to reveal their identity publicly.

What we learned

How to use GitHub and Visual Studio Code to collaborate. We also learned how to divide tasks, merge changes and fix problems together.

What's next for Lantern

Next, we want to turn Lantern into a mobile app with important safety features that can still work with limited internet access. We also want Safety Circle alerts to use native text messaging with location sharing, and as we improve our coding skills, we hope to add live translation so users can communicate across language barriers and navigate the platform more easily.