REACH

Introduction

We are all Asian. We all identify as women. We are all undergraduate students. We are all 19 years old. And we are all struggling.

As individuals, we each have our own personal life stories. But our project, REACH, could help bridge individual stories in the triangle area.

Our Project

Our project is a webpage called REACH which is an innovative platform for the triangle. Our mission statement is: Based on our values of vulnerability, trust, and respect, REACH establishes a relationship with our community that provides users a safe place to share their life stories, connects them with other users based on shared identities, and provides essential resources.

We aim to “reach” the Triangle by asking users to share their stories through an online form on our webpage. From there, they are able to find connections based on shared identities such as gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, etc. Users are also able to find crucial resources such as the numbers of hotlines.

For now, we are targeting the triangle area to gain valuable data regarding social issues. Perhaps there is a particular area facing an issue that can be solved. Perhaps a certain age group is experiencing something or perhaps a racial group is being targeted. By being vulnerable and sharing their stories, we end up getting data that can be used to help stop these social issues.

The Future of REACH

Of course, we would like to make this nationwide, but we wanted to start smaller- since we all live in the triangle area, it hit home. Our own community is facing a lot of issues that we want to start the conversation about. Each and EVERY person has a unique life story. Each person has their own struggles, but they are not alone.

For the future, we hope to turn this into a certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and turn this into a nationwide project. In addition, we hope to add a search function, and sorting function that eliminates fake or inappropriate stories, and we also hope to add a map that connects all the stories to portray the idea that we are all so different yet connected.

How REACH Was Built

REACH is a website that was built utilizing HTML, JavaScript and self-written CSS. The website incorporates a navigation bar that enables users to access pages that discuss who we are, what we hope to achieve, resources, and provides them the opportunity to share their stories. Users were able to do this by filling out a form that we created in HTML. They were also able to view other people's stories and filter them by hashtags based on identities. This sorting feature was implemented using double arrays created in backend JavaScript. Due to our inexperience with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, we were not able to completely finalize the form, sorting algorithm, and search features in order to properly display submission.

What We Learned and The Challenges We Faced

This project was really fun and challenging for us as we are all relatively new to hacking and hackathons especially. I personally am a Communication major from NCSU, Jeehe is a second year comp sci major from NCSU, Jessica is a second year comp sci major from UNC and Rupali is a third year comp sci major from UNC. Before this, we never knew each other. We met through slack a few days ago and when we got here, we started a project focusing on pokemon. Well, fast forward to 6pm last night and it was not working at all and we had to do something brand new. We collaborated and brainstormed and came up with this idea: we wanted to show the human connection. You have 3 people who have never been to a hackathon, 1 person who has never touched code before, but 4 human beings who have all struggled before whether that be because of race, religion, sexuality, etc. Through collaboration, we came to the conclusion we want to display the “you are not alone” ideology through our project.