View of the board containing messages and their locations
Organization view
Adding volunteer
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SMS Shopping for Seniors

The problem your project solves

As a result of the epidemic, people have been advised to stay home and refrain from coming to public places. However the vast majority of elderly people have been unable to follow the directives because they still needed to do the shopping in order to live on. In the last few weeks lots of volunteers offered to help, eg. by doing shopping. Unfortunately the majority of the elders, who are the target group for this kind of service, use only traditional media, such as text messages or newspapers.

The solution you bring to the table

The aim of the application is to enable seniors and volunteers to communicate in a way that is simple and intuitive for both groups. We achieved this by creating a notice board, where seniors can ask for help with shopping via SMS. Volunteers can see requests in their neighbourhood on an interactive map. If they pick a request, senior is asked to give a detailed address and then they will deliver the shopping to senior's door.

Target group

We have distinguished three types of users of our app - a senior, a volunteer and a system administrator.

Senior - communicates through SMS
Volunteer - uses a website, access to which is granted by entering correct login and password
Administrator - adds new volunteers to the system, supervises deliveries We chose to collaborate with organizations that already are helping people in need and have established volunteering structures. We want to provide them with the tool for efficient requests management that can reach all of people in needs

Communication and Procedural Path

Senior sends SMS to a given number with his shopping list along with the name of a district that he lives in.
The message is analyzed using Natural Language Processing and Geocoding.
Shopping list appears with an approximate location on the notification board on the website, which can be viewed only by logged users - volunteers verified by organisations.
A volunteer selects a shopping list with a suitable location from the notification board.
Senior is asked to give his exact address if he accepts the request of help in shopping. The shopping is done by a specific, verified person. Address is shared only with this person.
A volunteer delivers shopping to a given address.
Senior is asked to give feedback. He can rate the service or report a complaint.

What you have done during the weekend

The idea for SMS Shopping for Seniors was born on Polish Edition of Hack the Crisis hackathon. During the hackathon, we created a working prototype. However, we had to redesign the application almost from scratch to make it ready for deployment and adjust it to European market. We made the system suitable for charities and NGOs willing to help seniors with their shopping. The following functionalities were added:

Volunteers management (adding, deleting, editing, verifying)
Organizations management (adding, deleting, editing)
Custom messages creation (not only by SMS but also by volunteers)
Infrastructure for adding languages (users can add as many languages as they like, we implemented Polish and English ourselves)
Multilingual natural language processing (supports detecting localization in 40 languages)
Problem solving (if anything goes wrong organization manager gets notified and can react quickly)
Improved security (custom privileges, unauthorized requests prevention)
Error handling

The solution’s impact to the crisis

The largest mortality among the people suffering from COVID-19 is observed among the elderly people. Unfortunately one can still often find them in shops. Not every family is able to take care of the needs of their grandparents, some seniors are entirely on their own. Our app would help the seniors that have no one to help them. As a result every senior will get the possibility to join the action #stayathome and with that we will finally be all set to flatten the curve.

The necessities in order to continue the project

In order to complete the project we need to be able to cover monthly costs of server and SMS service. We will have to promote our solution through miscellaneous communication channels to bring the attention of charity organisations and expand the service to new areas. If the growth of implementations continues, we will have to set up a foundation and hire developers to support and maintain the app. The necessary funds will be gathered through crowd funding and donations. We chose to pursue the project non-commercially, collecting money only for operation costs.

The value of your solution(s) after the crisis

The platform bringing together seniors and volunteers is of universal value. After the crisis seniors are still going to need help from volunteers, however not on such a huge scale . Elderly people are often burdened with illnesses and limited mobility. Permanent implementation of our app into the structure of charity organization, will enable help to be more effective and personalized than before.