Shelter Search (Table 3)

Inspiration

As students at Drexel University we encounter homelessness each day in Philadelphia. We each have played a direct role in alleviating the issue on an individual level through donations and working at non-profits that help connect people who are homeless to shelters. The direct role can be difficult for those who have limited time and monetary funds for travel. We created this website to make it easier for people to navigate the emergency shelter system without having to spend their personal funds to go to programs that will do the same work in person.

What it does

Shelter Search is a navigational tool for those in need of finding temporary housing in Philadelphia, PA. It is user friendly and easily accessible for anyone with an internet connection. The site aims to provide a simple list based on specific search criteria, primarily location via zip code. Users can also indicate whether they are looking for private or public shelters, are a man or a woman, and if they have a child/children with them. The hope is that users will be able to find the resources that they need more efficiently. This tool also makes compiling the relevant information easier, so that it can be distributed to those without access to the internet.

How we built it

We created the basic structure of the website using HTML and styled it using CSS. We made it interactive using Javascript.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenge was we started the project off slowly because we were inexperienced and lacked specific skills needed to create a website with the functionality that we wanted. Once we attended all three web design workshops, we gained the knowledge to create an interactive website.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We went out of our comfort zone and attended a hackathon, which we all had little experience with. We came to Technica intending on joining a group and observing more experienced hackers. Instead, we brainstormed and came up with a mutual goal to combat homelessness in Philadelphia, and managed to create our own website using the skills we learned this weekend. We now have a functional and interactive website that we created from scratch and hope to continue working on in the future!

What we learned

We learned hard skills such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding, but more importantly, we also learned how to effectively cooperate with other hackers using GitHub and how to utilize online resources to deepen our understanding of programming languages.

What's next for Shelter Search

In the future, this tool will be expanded to include a wider range of locations and features such as:

Providing walking directions and maps to the resources
Making the database editable by shelter employees so they can regularly update their capacity
Expanding to other resources such as food, public bathrooms, etc.