LeapSafe

Inspiration

Research reveals that as recently as 2013, 61% of LGBTQ+ individuals in the United States avoided public spaces or events due to fear of discrimination or violence (TruthOut). In 2021, Health & Social Work, the official journal of the National Association of Social Workers, reported that nearly 60% of transgender individuals actively avoided public restrooms to escape confrontation or harassment. Alarmingly, 95% of these instances stemmed from being questioned or told they were using the "wrong" bathroom. Access to restrooms is a basic human necessity, yet for many transgender individuals, this fear leads to severe health consequences. Data from the U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS) shows that 90% of those who avoided public restrooms had to “hold it” for extended periods, 52% restricted their food and water intake, 12% developed urinary tract infections (UTIs), and nearly 3% suffered from kidney infections. These statistics are not just numbers—they represent a crisis that demands action. Our mission is to leverage technology to create safer, more inclusive spaces where no one has to choose between their well-being and their dignity. The need for inclusivity is urgent. Our team is driven by a deep commitment to fostering inclusive technology that empowers and protects the LGBTQIA2S+ community.

What it does

LeapSafe is a web app designed to help users easily find nearby gender-neutral bathrooms, providing a convenient solution for anyone seeking safe, inclusive spaces. If a user ever feels unsafe, LeapSafe offers immediate assistance by allowing them to send real-time notifications about their current status to nearby community members, ensuring help is always within reach. The app includes safety features and crowd-sourced verification system, ensuring that every location listed is trustworthy and secure. Whether you’re exploring a new city or navigating your hometown, LeapSafe is a reliable, user-friendly tool that prioritizes your safety and peace of mind on every journey.

How we built it

After developing the idea about what we want to do and making a timeline for it, we brainstormed our idea on paper and felt ready to move into actually programming the project once we created our Figma design. As we were creating the frontend and backend of LeapSafe, we made sure to communicate with each other our questions and concerns in order to prevent any potential issues in the future as we worked on completing our designated tasks. Eventually, we reached the final hours and were ready to put all our ideas down and talk about the motivation behind our app, especially with how we connect with it on a personal level because we want others to be able to connect with this app regardless of how strong their connection to the LGBTQIA2S+ community is. Moreover, we were able to balance out the needs for the technical and conceptual aspects of LeapSafe and completed everything as our timeline stated!

Challenges we ran into

One of the major challenges we ran into would be integrating the frontend with the backend because although we were making great progress as we worked on our responsibilities within the team, we had ran into a few bugs that interfered with our timeline for LeapSafe just because of how long the bugs took to fix them. Also, we had learned a bit of new technologies because of needing to store the location data (longitude and latitude) for the Google API in order to properly make use of it for our intended users. Overall, these challenges took some time but they were valuable for us to learn from these situations and what skills they can offer us.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As we stated before, we made great progress on the frontend and backend when we were in the early stages of LeapSafe. For the frontend, we are proud of the theme we were able to come up with, especially with our theme and animal for this product being able to help up with the UI and creativity for the web app. Along with the main feature that made us confident in this app being something we were able to accomplish on the backend side of things, where we were able to successfully implement the functionalities and operations for this geolocation feature. Overall, we are proud of everybody in the team being able to bring their best skills to the table and being able to emphasize our motivation for the product through their work ethic and determination for LeapSafe.

What we learned

From this experience, we learned about the importance of communication, whether that is for technical or non technical positions. Not only that, but also being able to learn about new technologies and techniques was something that we were glad to gain!

What's next for LeapSafe

Here are some ways we would expand on LeapSafe if we had more financial resources or more time to work on this product: expand on preferences for location searches (distance to the nearest bathroom, type of area, etc.), community forums for connecting with others in the LGBTQIA2S+ community, connecting uber/car services to the app, making the safety features more complex, and connecting the app to medical devices that alert users too.

Built With

• css
• figma
• googlemapapi's
• javascript
• mongodb
• nextjs
• react