ResQ Plugin

ResQ is a collaborative WordPress plugin, which allows any WordPress based site to offer its visitors the opportunity to help those in need or to benefit from local help.

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Inspiration

For the last couple of weeks, I saw my family members go to work, fighting COVID-19, while I was still finishing up my studies. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t contribute, and wanted to implement what I learned at university to help with the fight against COVID-19. Together with a group of friends from different countries across Europe, we decided to work together to find a way to contribute. We quickly realised that there already many initiatives trying to contribute, but a problem is that they are all spread across the web. Against this backdrop, we decided to create ResQ.

What it does

ResQ is a collaborative WordPress plugin, which allows any WordPress based site to offer its visitors the opportunity to help those in need or to benefit from local help. This easy to install plug-in allows its users to get redirected to pre-existed, trusted, charities or self-help networks, allowing for more people to get into contact with them.

How we built it

We started this week with drawing the design and layout on a sheet of paper. Afterwards, we replicated these drawings on PowerPoint and sent them to a designer friend called Léna Consigny, who helped us with the initial design, which we improved upon. Once the design was validated, I called upon the services of Maxime Macé, a PHP developer with knowledge of WordPress. He helped me to make this project a reality and to create a first prototype on a website that we created on WordPress for the occasion. My brother István Lázár (full-stack developer and digital marketing consultant), Alicia Gaborit (designer) and Maxim van Hoorn (full-stack developer and financial analyst) joined us this weekend to help us develop the project, give proofs of work and present it to this Hackathon.

Challenges we ran into

The first big challenge I faced was to present it to a first hackathon last weekend with another team, without being ready. As we never participated in a Hackathon before, we mainly developed the project instead of working on how to properly present it. The plugin worked as intended, but the presentation conveying what it was and what problem it solved was still missing. We ended up having the prototype we expected but with a communication that didn’t match the project. Not being part of the finalists for the competition was unfortunate, but I decided to gather a new team with hard-working people that match my ambitions and a wider range of skills to run for this new Hackathon.

Working on this new Hackathon brought new challenges:

  • Development of tailor-made prototypes to fit the charity and self-help network offers of different European countries
  • Translation and adaptation of the existing materials, which were in French (website, explanatory documents, social networks)
  • Creation of good communication materials to better explain the project
  • Research for relevant data to support our initiatives
  • Inclusion of better GDPR and Data Protection standards
  • Identification of our needs and creation of a first draft for a business plan

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First of all, I'm glad that I had the courage to participate in this hackathon. It is definitely outside of my comfort zone. But more importantly, I'm very proud to have found a team of great and dedicated people to help me.

We have done the research and coding to end up with 4 versions of the plugin for 4 different European countries: France, Netherlands, Spain, and Italy. They are ready to use, and can be scaled up to include all the member states of the European Union. They are all ready-to-use. We have translated and adapted all the existing materials to our new European strategy. We have created a good video to pitch our project for the Hackathon, which will be an excellent material to communicate on our project for further initiatives (social networks, crowdfunding, other). We collected relevant data to support our project and have made it GDPR-compliant. We created a first draft of a business plan and now know precisely what our needs are for the next 6 months. We are now ready to scale geographically.

What we learned

This experience taught us many things:

  • The importance of being persistent when you think you have a good idea, but most of all, the importance of testing it to make sure you’re going in the right direction.
  • The importance of having the right people around you to work on a project, would it be for their hard skills but over all for them showing soft skills and principles that match yours. In the end, team building is the most important part in such projects.
  • The importance of having good advice (thank you Gaia Guadagnoli).

To resume: never give up, believe in yourself and in others. Always keep an eye and an ear open and your mind will follow the lead!

What's next for ResQ Plugin

We are now ready for what might come up.

For the next three months, we have 5 main objectives:

  1. To find funding to help us promote this project and reach out to websites built with WordPress.
  2. To create a legal status for our project and make it a non-for-profit association.
  3. To scale-up geographically, creating different versions for each European country in need.
  4. To get results and test our plugin on a larger scale.
  5. To extend our team, gathering different helpful talents matching our needs (cybersecurity, data, legal, social media).

On the mid-term, we’d like to:

  1. Extend our plugin to other CMS (Content Management Systems) and, why not, make it available to websites that are not based on CMS.
  2. Make it possible for the users to find self-help networks, charities or even businesses in need of donations near them to enhance local help.

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