RealChange

Inspiration We were inspired by seeing how many people care about issues in their schools and communities but don’t know who actually has the power to fix them. Many concerns stay on social media and never become real action. We wanted to change that by creating a simple, trustworthy way for people to be heard.

What It Does Real Change is an AI-powered platform that helps users turn their voice into REAL action. Users describe an issue, and the platform matches them with the correct authority, generates a petition, builds community support, tracks progress, and enables event organizing.

How We Built It

We built Real Change as a web application using modern tools and responsible AI practices.

Frontend: Next.js and Tailwind CSS

Backend: Supabase for authentication and database

AI: OpenAI API for organization matching and petition generation

Our system follows this flow:

Issue (snow not being cleaned up properly) → AI Matching (Matches you to actual responsible entities) → Petition (AI assists you to create petition and also generates images) → Community (under petitions users who signed can join a discussion chat and also track updates) → Impact (real change through update tracking and community via discussion and events)

This ensures each concern is guided toward real action.

Challenges We Ran Into

Ensuring the AI recommends organizations with real authority
Preventing misinformation and harmful content
Integrating multiple systems under time pressure
Balancing powerful features with a simple user experience
Managing limited time during the hackathon

Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of

Built a working AI-powered civic platform
Created a transparent “Power Mapping” system
Implemented progress tracking and community features
Designed ethical AI safeguards
Developed a realistic growth and funding plan

What We Learned

Through this project, we learned:

-How civic systems and local authorities work

How to responsibly use AI in public-facing tools
The importance of data accuracy and transparency
How to collaborate effectively under pressure
How technology can support social impact

What’s Next for Real Change

In the future, we plan to:

Expand partnerships within communities
Improve and verify our authority database
Launch pilot programs in local neighborhoods
Integrate event-based fundraising and outreach through the use of Ticketmaster checkout. Event purchasing platforms such as Ticketmaster will be able to ask users who publish their tickets if they would like to allow purchasers to support a cause on realchange.org that aligns with them.
Strengthen moderation and privacy systems

Our long-term goal is to make Real Change a trusted civic platform that helps communities solve real problems.