RefugEase

Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project is to help refugees who are searching for an organization that can support their needs. Due to the recent crises around the globe such as the invasion of Ukraine and the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria (Kahramanmaras earthquakes), thousands of refugees have fled into other countries. Thus, seeing the situation abroad, we decided to focus our efforts on the topic of refugee resettlement.

What it does

Our team focused on four of the most pressing issues that refugees often face after resettlement. The first is education. Many refugees experience language barriers after resettlement, which limits most of their day-to-day activities. Due to the lack of opportunities refugees have in their new countries, the second issue they face is unemployment. Refugees who resettle also run into legal troubles, such as their lack of a Social Security Number, which prevents them from receiving government benefits. Finally, some lack basic needs, such as housing, which we aim to tackle.

How we built it

First, we realized that no major database containing refugee organizations across the United States existed. Therefore, our team collected data from more than 460 organizations to construct a dataset. We attributed each organization with tags, or characteristics, which we then used to filter based on the user's preferences. We used GeoCoder to extract the latitude and longitude from each address, and a Google Sheets script to extract the URL. The website was built on director using Express. Our UI was built using HTML and CSS. We turned our dataset into a .csv file and used the Mapbox API to produce an interactive map. The map contains the nearest organizations and gives information about the organization, such as the URL of the website and it's contact information.

Challenges we ran into

Our first challenge was transferring data between our database and Mapbox. Due to the large discrepancy in available data, many of our challenges also lay in data collection. It was very time consuming, and the bulk of our efforts were spent on collecting data for ourselves, which left us less time to improve on our website and it's overall design.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of constructing a website and compiling over 460 organizations in all fifty states. The website is working, and it returns the nearest organizations given a specific range. With a few more improvements, we believe we could actually test this website, and implement it in the real world to help the millions of refugees who need it.

What we learned

We learned a lot about web development and creating and sorting data efficiently. We also learned how to split our work and combine it towards the end. We had two team members work on the front-end of the website and the other two team members work on the back-end of the website. During the last couple hours, we combined our work to create our finished product.

What's next for RefugEase

A couple of improvements can be made for RefugEase. Our first step is improving our outreach in the United States, making sure our website can help refugees, and that there are no more additional features they would want. Additional features we are considering include adding a Google Translate feature, which allows them to read the website in a different language. We would also prefer for the user to enter their address instead of their latitude and longitude, as their coordinates may be less accessible. After, we hope to expand our organizations globally, expanding as far as we can.