Philanthroplist

Inspiration

I took a cue from one of the suggestions in the resources page - the Charity Aware suggestion. Finding local charities to get involved in my country can be a herculean task. Prior to finally settling on this idea, I did a bit of research on local charities. It took hours of research to locate lists provided by local blogs and the lists are not as comprehensive as one would expect.

They rarely provided direct access to the charities themselves in form of a link to their websites. Even when they did, you still needed to go further to determine the legitimacy of the charity by searching the corporate affairs commission CAC portal to establish their identity as a registered charity.

Having to do this research myself provided me with the inspiration to create something like a directory so that people can skip the mind-numbing work and skip to the good part - supporting and giving to causes dear to their heart locally.

What it does

It lists local charities in Nigeria and allows users to filter based on the areas of focus or causes in which they are interested. Users can see all the details about a charity and can even get involved by clicking directly on the donation links provided by the charities if they wish. Additionally, users can request for their favorite charities to be included for others to support.

How I built it

It is a react web app with Node.js serverless functions. The serverless functions interact with a Firestore which stores the data for all the charities. Each serverless function serves as an endpoint which will be used on the front end. I also used the Kendo React UI which provided a lot of the components out of box.

Challenges I ran into

It is my first time using Firestore and serverless functions so I ran into a bit of a challenge setting up and writing some complex queries. I also ran into some challenge hosting the demo on vercel. I am also not skilled in design. So I had a bit of a challenge coming up with a user interface that matched the tone of what I was trying to develop.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Learning how to use the Telerik Test Studio for APIs to create test paths to test my application's endpoints.
Scaling the learning curve from using a technology for the first time and implementing the application in time
Following through to the end in the hackathon.