Inspiration
As immigrants and members of immigrant families, we have personally experienced how difficult it can be to navigate essential services in a new country. Finding trustworthy information about healthcare, jobs, housing, and legal support is often overwhelming, especially when English is not your first language. We were inspired to build NewRoots to bridge that gap and create a safe, accessible digital support system for immigrant communities.
What it does
NewRoots Cloud is an AI-powered, multilingual resource navigator that helps non-English-speaking immigrants quickly access reliable information. Users can ask questions about food assistance, healthcare, employment, legal help, and scam prevention. The platform delivers clear, easy-to-understand guidance in their preferred language, making critical resources more accessible and less intimidating.
How we built it
We built NewRoots as a production‑grade full‑stack web application using a TypeScript + React (Vite) frontend and a Spring Boot (Java/Maven) backend with OpenAI-powered chat. The frontend is component-driven (frontend) and compiled to a static bundle; the backend exposes REST endpoints and is packaged as a runnable JAR. In AWS, the UI is hosted on S3 and served globally via CloudFront (HTTPS via ACM), the backend runs on Elastic Beanstalk, and relational data is stored in Amazon RDS. CI/CD is automated with GitHub Actions for build/test/deploy, and infrastructure is provisioned with Terraform/CloudFormation. Operational best practices include CloudWatch logs/alarms for observability and IAM least privilege for service access.
Challenges we ran into
One major challenge was integrating OpenAI properly and handling API errors and response parsing. Switching between languages dynamically and ensuring accurate responses in both English and Spanish required careful prompt engineering and backend logic adjustments. Deploying and configuring AWS services correctly under time constraints was also challenging.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We successfully implemented the city-based resource database and structured the application to support multilingual functionality. We also deployed the project using AWS cloud infrastructure, making it scalable and accessible.
What we learned
We learned how to design and deploy a serverless application using AWS infrastructure, integrate a real AI model into a production-style backend, and structure a cloud-based system for scalability and reliability. We also gained hands-on experience troubleshooting API integrations and managing cloud deployments.
What's next for Newroots
Next, we plan to expand language support beyond English and Spanish, integrate geolocation-based resource matching, improve scam detection capabilities, and add secure user accounts for personalized assistance. We also aim to partner with local community organizations to ensure resource accuracy and real-world impact.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.