Inspiration

This past summer, we were inspired by watching our own classmates take the initiative to organize social movements to spread awareness of the challenges that face our communities. However, some of these movements were unable to gain traction due to the lack of information and resources. At the same time, we knew individuals that had the required skill sets to help these movements flourish. Thus, we created Lend A Hand to connect these two sets of people.

What it does

Lend A Hand connects passionate organizers with skilled volunteers to initiate social movements. On the organizer side, our service allows users to create and post a new event or movement along with relevant information including location, time, and desired skillsets. On the volunteer side, our service suggests relevant events to users and allows them to sign-up for events.

How we built it

We built Lend A Hand using React for frontend development, and Django REST Framework and SQLite for the backend.

Challenges we ran into

As relatively new developers, we did not have much experience developing full-stack applications so we had difficulty integrating the backend with the frontend of our website.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Since this was our first time creating a React app, we were proud of designing a tool that can positively impact our community using the new skills that we learned.

What we learned

We learned a lot of new frontend and backend development techniques. We also learned more about the development process and how we can bring our ideas to life.

What's next for Lend A Hand

Given the limited time frame, we were unable to implement some of the features that we had initially planned for. Some of these include using the Stripe API to properly implement donations, a refined suggesting/matching algorithm, implementing chatting features, and improving user experience and backend integration.