Inspiration: The source of inspiration comes from the youth we see every day; youth forced to live on the streets of Seattle who are in need of basic services and connection to other people. Human dignity is realized when each one of us can have our basic human needs met (food, shelter, access to toilet facilities, a shower, and power for our phones to remain connected to others).
What it does: StreetSmart guides at risk youth to all of the resources they need to survive and thrive at the darkest times. The website and the app provide a free, open map of essential resources like showers, food, water, phone charging stations, medical care, counseling, and internet access.
How we built it: We built StreetSmart using a combination of existing third party services such as Amazon Web Service's DynamoDB and Google's public map APIs. These tools made it possible for us to focus on solving the problem facing today's youth.
Challenges we ran into: Most of our challenges were experienced during the initial setup and configuration of our development environment.
Accomplishments that we're proud of: 1) accomplishing the scope of the project - it could be applied everywhere in every city; it is easy to replicate - in such a short amount of time; 2) cross fertilization of fields and professions
What we learned: During this process we learned that ultimately information is power, and that simply having this information available for youth may make the difference between getting stuck in the School to Prison Pipeline and finding a better path.
What's next for StreetSmart: StreetSmart is a highly extensible application that could easily be introduced in new cities. We plan to continue to provide this highly valuable information to those who need it most.
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