Lenda

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  Home Page

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  Nonprofit Profile

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  Volunteer Discover Page

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  What Volunteers See

Inspiration

I currently work at the Texas Muslim Women's Foundation, a domestic violence nonprofit based in Dallas, Texas.

Due to federal budget cuts, the organization has been short-staffed and increasingly reliant on volunteers. However, outreach efforts to student organizations, sororities, and mosques often receive limited responses.

This revealed a key problem: there is no centralized system connecting nonprofits with people who want to help.

What it does

Lenda is a platform where nonprofits and volunteers can create profiles and connect through events.

Key Features:

• Personalized feed: Volunteers select causes they care about, and relevant events appear first
  
• Follow and notifications: Volunteers can follow nonprofits and receive updates on new events
  
• Discover page: Users can swipe through events and match based on interest
  
• Registration system: Swiping right registers a volunteer for an event
  
• Approval system: Nonprofits can accept or reject volunteers based on profile, experience, or capacity
  
• Event updates: Approved volunteers receive details and schedule changes
  
• Service hour tracking: Nonprofits can log and verify volunteer hours
  

How we built it

I used Replit to generate the application by writing detailed prompts describing the features I wanted. I then refined those prompts based on the outputs to improve the functionality.

Challenges we ran into

I am currently pursuing my Masters in Psychology and have never had any reason to code since the majority of my work is people-based. Going into this project, I had no idea where to even begin and learned about applications such as Replit the day before the hackathon from friends competing. I was in a field completely different than my own and did not know what steps were accesible to me.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The goal of this project is to give back and make it easier for nonprofits to find help and volunteers to give help. I am proud that this project is not for profit and that it has the potential to improve the lives of communities across the country.

What we learned

My main takeaway from this opportunity is that I learned just how simple it is to make a product. My whole life, I saw coding as this challenge and saw entrepreneurs as these super geniuses with years of experience under their belt. But after this hackathon and seeing what I was able to create in a day, I have learned that anybody, even someone with a noncoding background, can create something meaningful.

What's next for Lenda

• Onboard nonprofits, starting with the Texas Muslim Women's Foundation
  
• Reach out to other organizations to expand adoption
  
• Promote the platform to students at the University of Texas at Dallas
  
• Continue scaling the platform to reach communities across the country
  

Built With

• replit