Saidia-Help Application

Your Lifeline in Times of Need

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Inspiration

TW: Mention of Violence Being a woman in Africa, I am inspired by the daily catastrophic stories that are heard every now and then about Gender-Based Violence. A most recent case is a woman who was attacked in her own home by a perpetrator that was hiding in her closet. These acts of violence are committed in different capacities including domestically at home, in the streets and even in other unlikely areas. In a state of panic and confusion, the victims are unaware of what to do, and worse who to reach out to. Aside from violence, quick emergencies eg. fires are not tackled adequately as civic education on where to get help is often lacking. The proposed solution is the Saidia-Help App.

What it does

Saidia which is Swahili for help aims at being a very easy-to-use and straight-to-the-point application that:

  1. Provides common emergency contacts in the app, so that a user is able to easily and quickly call for help.
  2. Provide a pre-drafted message asking for help with the victim's name and location for ease of sharing the information
  3. Show a geolocation mapping of hospitals and police stations closest to the victim, in case they have been thrown out of their own home and are seeking immediate assistance The first 2 are offline capabilities, to factor in the current situation in the country, and the last one requires an internet connection for those who are privileged.

How it was Built

The application is an MVP built using Flutter for cross-platform use and Dart to connect to the backend, SQLite for offline capabilities and Google Maps API for geolocation mapping.

Challenges Experienced

This is my second application using Flutter, hence there were plenty of challenges and bugs experienced. One of the major hurdles integrating the Google Maps API for geolocation mapping as there were a lot of edge cases to be handled and since it was my first time using the API there was a lot to be done and reworked. Small bugs were also issues that took a long time to fix eg. Using the URL launcher was not working for some time and the only issue was cleaning the project and rerunning it once again.

Accomplishments

Despite the challenges, we are proud of what we have achieved with the Saidia-Help App. We successfully created an easy-to-use application that provides quick access to emergency contacts. The inclusion of a pre-drafted message, personalized with the victim's name and location, streamlines the process of seeking help. Furthermore, the geolocation mapping feature helps victims locate nearby hospitals and police stations swiftly, enhancing their chances of receiving immediate assistance.

Lessons Learnt

  1. Building Simple, clean UIs using Flutter
  2. This was my first time using Flutter and SQLite and working with the Google Maps API hence it was somewhat of a steep learning curve but I dedicated a lot of quality time and harnessed lessons learnt during the MLH APIs Week to implement the functionality.

What's next for Saidia-Help Application

  1. Optimization of the application especially if it is to handle large amounts of data and still load the information seamlessly.
  2. Adding more functionalities eg. live chat support to factor in people who want to reach specialists for help or community boards for sharing experiences
  3. Including more audio-visual content to encourage the

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