Prospera

A savings site that encourages women to reach their financial goals.

Comment

Inspiration

Problems faced by women in finance:

  1. Financial Literacy: Women have lower levels of financial literacy than men, with only 17% of women being able to answer four or five basic financial literacy questions correctly, compared to 36% of men.

  2. Financial Confidence: Women are less likely than men to feel confident in their financial decision-making abilities, with only 33% of women feeling confident compared to 45% of men.

  3. Financial Advisors: Women are more likely to feel intimidated by financial advisors and less likely to seek their services, with only 23% of financial advisors being women.

Even in an increasingly modern world, there are still noticeable wage disparities between women and men. To reduce the wage gap, we must educate females on financial literacy topics. Learning about money management can allow women to maximize their income and build financial independence. It also teaches them the power investing can have on compounding their wealth over time, helping women with everyday life and planning for retirement. It opens several doors of opportunity for females and empowers them to make informed decisions pertaining to their money. This topic compelled us because we aspire to build a future where everyone can achieve financial security, regardless of gender!!

What it does

Our design consists of three components: WhatsApp Chatbot - The chatbot is an interactive way for the user to interact with the design. It provides specific information based on what the user wants to know, such as their monthly budget, expenditures, savings, and more.

Website - The website provides women with a multitude of financial information that they can learn more about based on their interests.

Challenges/Milestones: We have incorporated financial milestones to allow women and underrepresented communities for extra motivation and accountability.

How we built it

We used HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap for the front end. We utilized Flask for the backend and the chatbot, SQLITE for CRUD, Auth0 for authentication and Twilio to build the Bot.

Note: We could not use WhatsApp buttons since it is only available for business numbers, but we will indeed implement that feature when the idea is implemented at a large scale.

Challenges we ran into

  • Working with Twilio, which we were unfamiliar with
  • Managing our scope such that we delivered a genuine product, even if it was a bit bare bones
  • CSS and website design
  • Utilizing the backend, we got it all to work in the end
  • Brainstorming: It took a long time for us to develop financial and women empowerment concepts that had a real societal influence.
  • Creating a login page took some difficulty as it incorporated many skills and took time to get it to work right

We eventually fixed all errors though and made a successful backend combined with an elegant frontend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • We are proud to have created a website as well as a chatbot to create a seamless user experience.
  • It was exciting to find a solution that can help females reach their financial goals through various ways.
  • When implemented on a large scale, the idea will benefit many women and underrepresented communities owing to its ability to empower them.

What we learned

We learned a lot during the weekend:

  • Flask can construct web apps that are quick, scalable, and easy to use
  • Twilio allows you to create unique solutions easily
  • Using Flask helps us in building backends faster
  • Frontend development and design
  • Finally, we learned a lot from each other and Girls ReCode Hacks during the weekend
  • We can't wait to use over new knowledge in future projects!

What's next for Prospera

Prospera has a number of future ambitions, including a focus on providing a more personalized approach to data and introducing additional features that provide financial support to young females and other underrepresented communities. We aim to implement these features as a means of providing better access to present resources and enabling control over finances. We can do this by using ML algorithms to find trends based on user data to create financial plans. Adding on, we can create finance quizzes to better understand the users' criteria. We also intend on enhancing the user experience by improving chat functionality and overall usability. By incorporating feedback, Prospera can continue to adapt and expand to address user wants and needs.

Share this project:

Updates