Inspiration
Applications like Tinder are the most bustling hubs for making social connections, especially for busy adults with things to do. Coming to Canada and being introduced to the prevalence of using technology to make a multitude of connections helped us realize that it was never about people's unwillingness to connect, but about the lack of time and energy to do so. Having all come from third world countries, this led us to bring the situation home and raise the question...what if its not people's unwillingness to help others, but simply their lack of time to do so?
What it does
Our website serves as a 'median' platform that connects benefactors and donors to struggling communities all around the world. We recognize that with how busy life gets, no one has the time to visit their nearest charity or donate to a family halfway across the world. Hence, we created a 'subscription' template where donors get to first specify what category of issue they're interested in tackling. From there, we used the worldbank indicator API to gather regions in the world affected by the chosen issue the most (in order). The donor gets to choose a region, where they will then access a dating-app like structure of young children in need and their stories. The donor gets to swipe, and choose one that they would like to support. The website would then prompt the donor for how much they would like to donate per month, and then link the donor's bank/card information to that registered to the recipient. This way, they get to help the children consistently without ever having to lift a finger. We also built the 'recipient' side of the website, where registered ambassadors could sign children up and post their information.
How we built it
The front-end of the website uses HTML, CSS, and the Bootstrap framework for design, and Javascript along with its JQuery library for functionality. The backend uses Python and the SQL database, along with the python framework Flask.
Challenges we ran into
Given the substantially large size of the API, it was hard to have to filter out the endpoints by year and sort the data. However, most databases in the real world work with large amounts of data so it was a substantial gain.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Being able to synchronize different parts of the project was difficult, but effective communication made it possible.
What we learned
We learnt the importance of collaboration and effective communication, especially when it comes to working under time constraints. Moreover, we got to learn many useful coding skills which we will surely used for years to come, along with their libraries and frameworks.
What's next for Median
We will polish up the front-end and add functionality for payment for donations. An option to register as a recognized partner of Median in an international country will also be included and only these partners can have the ability to create profiles, for safety.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.