Project Connect

The team! (Taken in Chicago)

Inspiration

Amid the news surrounding the COVID crisis, it's hard to miss reports of people who've fallen through the cracks, despite the efforts of governments throughout the world. Jesus, though God incarnate, washed feet and served his neighbours. We want to give the Church tools to do the same.

What it does

The chat bot connects vulnerable people to local churches, which can offer not only necessities and community, but eternal hope and salvation in Christ!

How we built it

We are still in the process of building a fully functional service. The plan is to use the Facebook Messenger API for the chat bot, and Microsoft Azure, Node.js and Google Sheets for the backend on which everything will sit.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled to work with Chatfuel, a Messenger bot builder which has a few issues. Two of us also work full time during the week.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our avoidance of reinventing the wheel and instead integrating a group of different services to do what we needed.

What we learned

I can't speak for the others, I think they're both asleep! I learned that God is able to bring the right people together at the right time (from across the world!) to effectively work toward a goal together.