SJSUHacksSJSUConnect

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Track - Homelessness

Inspiration

SJSUConnect was inspired by Cash for Trash, a program already implemented within San Jose, which incentivizes people to keep San Jose clean by providing them with compensation. We know how difficult it can be to escape homelessness and leave a cycle of poverty and lack of shelter. This is why we wanted to see a version of Cash for Trash incentivized for college students to help fund their education and provide them with an opportunity to escape homelessness.

What it does

SJSUConnect provides a modified version focused on support SJSU students who may be dealing with homelessness or a housing crisis. The program would provide housing in the dorms, priority for part-time on campus jobs, and jobs cleaning up San Jose and beautifying the community. Part-Time jobs would depend upon specific information provided by the user, and will be elaborated on with an advisor.

How we built it

We used Android Studio to create the mobile user-interactive app and used kotlin and java to code our app. We created a home page with SJSU’s logo, with it leading to an About page that explains the program, this then leads into pages with information on Part-Time jobs available, and Advisors available. There is a page for the user to input personal information for the advisor to use to guide them through the program.

Challenges we ran into

We were originally going to implement both frontend and backend, but found that constraints would make it so that we wouldn’t have a usable product by the end of the hackathon, so we just stuck with frontend workings. We then considered using ReactJS, studying JavaScript for it, but we ran into similar issues. We went through extensive discussions to go through potential scenarios where the program could fail, and acted accordingly, which did take a lot of effort and time. We’re all new to hackathons, but we were able to learn a lot from this!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to input an image of the SJSU mascot icon, and change the background color of our app pages. Our app is able to take and save user input as well, in addition to its interactive elements.

What we learned

We learned Kotlin, and the use of Android Studio to create a mobile app that implements user-interactive elements, which took a lot of effort, but was definitely worth it in the end.

What's next for SJSUHacksSJSUConnect

We plan on implementing more user-interactive elements, with a place for feedback for the program, and we plan on implementing a swipe feature for potential job positions.