MentorMe

Inspiration

40% of children living in poverty aren’t prepared for primary schooling, which impacts their school performance. Children that live below the poverty line are 1.3 times more likely to have developmental delays or learning disabilities than those who don’t live in poverty. Children who grow up impoverished complete fewer years of schooling and earn much lower income than people who did not grow up poor. People who do not earn a high school diploma by age 20 are 7 times more likely to be persistently poor between ages 25 and 30.

We need to help these students when they are young so that when they are older, they are able to succeed.

What it does

MentorMe is a unique PWA that allows for schools to easily connect to each other and transfer devices from the ones who have them to ones who don’t.

We took a different approach from the common hackathon project. We plan to implement our software as part of a statewide plan to promote mentoring in all schools by making people more aware of this application. This application eliminated the usual bureaucracy required when it comes to getting programs that require user input in schools, instead going directly to people who can help instead, and using schools to spread the word. We think that doing these types of projects are important and should be promoted more in the hackathon community.

Initially, mentors fill out a quick form where they specify who they are and what they know. All the information is stored in our Google Cloud database, and the data is pulled and read for our algorithm. Students are then able to search for mentors that are in their specific interest area, and can contact the mentor within the web app itself.

How I built it

We used Google Cloud Firestore to manage the database while using the Firebase Authentication library to manage user authentication. Then, we created a web app using Vue.js, Axios, and Bulma to manage the frontend to make it as appealing as possible. We also created a Flask server to manage email sending, which was a first for me.

Challenges I ran into

It is much harder to complete a solo project for hackathons, however, I decided to go for the challenge and see what would be the best I could do. I dealt with a lot of issues along the way, especially with making sure that the swipe view could work as intended and making sure that the . We used dummy data for the swipe view to demonstrate how it would be used for multiple mentors, however, the information that was on the main page was from the database itself.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am proud of being able to make such an app in such a short time. This is the first time I used the Buefy framework to make apps (I either use regular Bulma or Material design). I also learned a lot about Vue.js by making this application.

What I learned

• Flask Emailing
• Buefy UI
• Better Vue.js Apps
• Implementing swipeable cards

What's next for MentorMe

We want to make this public by hosting everything on public servers and have as many people as possible use it! It would be wonderful to have your support to make this a reality, as publicity is very important for such an application. The full application, with additional features such as automatic matching for the students, giving students emails and tips themselves, and virtual teaching materials, will likely be released for public use by the end of August 2020, in time for the new school year, which will be held remotely in many places. At-home learning has already proved difficult for many students.

Built With

• bulma
• python
• vue