LoVo

Inspiration

In today's fast-paced and technology-centered society, it can be difficult to find the time to give back to the community you live in. We wanted to create a web application that would make volunteer work more accessible for those who may not have the time to conduct an extensive search into where they could make themselves available.

What it does

This website allows the user to create an account and either search for potential opportunities they would like to donate their time to or generate a new listing requesting the assistance of those nearby. In the case that the user is looking for a way they could give back, they are given the chance to input the maximum distance they are willing to travel along with their job preferences, allowing the resulting list to be personalized to their specifications. Should a particular listing interest them, the user can click on it for more information such as job details, information regarding the user that posted the job, along with the ratings associated with that particular individual. After confirming their attendance at the volunteer event, the original poster will be notified and the listing removed from the catalog displayed to other users of the app. In the event that this is a large-scale undertaking, however, the original poster will have to specify the number of individuals needed and the event will remain public until a sufficient amount of people accept it. Unfortunately, multiple aspects of our web application are not yet fulling functioning due to several obstacles that will be discussed in a later section of this posting. The previously stated information are things we would hopefully implement in the future.

How we built it

Through the utilization of Google's API – geocoding and geolocation – along with several technologies that we seamless integrated into our project we attempted to provide the user with the previously described experience. Javascript, HTML, CSS, and Flask were utilized for the frontend whereas Python and Flask were used for backend.

Challenges we ran into

The most significant challenge we faced was not only constructing an idea that could feasibly be programmed within the next 36 hours but also implementing the idea we eventually decided on despite our relative lack of knowledge in frontal development.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

All of us have our relative strengths, however, integrating the respective sections we worked proved to be more difficult than expected. Thankfully, we learned how to transfer the necessary information between our components which resulted in an immense feeling of satisfaction. Once that hurdle had been overcome, the remaining sections were significantly easier to generate.

What we learned

As mentioned previously, each member of the group had their own unique strengths in specific languages. By joining together to work on this project, each of us was forced outside of our respective comfort zones and given the opportunity to explore areas of application development that we hadn't previously.

What's next for LoVo

Due to the fact that multiple areas of our website do not yet perform in the way that we would like, our next step would be increasing functionality. Once the site has been programmed to our satisfaction, we would field test it before eventually allowing outside users to upload volunteer opportunities and accept events created by others. We also consider removing the option to add a payment price to an activity, as the purpose behind such an application is generating a platform that fosters selflessness without the expectation of reward.

Built With

• flask
• google-geocoding
• google-geolocation
• javascript
• python
• sql