Strive

Inspiration

As college students, we are well aware of the impact of COVID-19 and its exacerbation of inequality within our country. Lack of access to higher education furthers this gap and targets certain groups. With the rise of the pandemic, we saw more and more often that college was not an option for many people. We wanted to develop something that could alleviate this difficulty while also serving as a practical solution to a frequent problem. We recognized that a commonplace hassle in the average persons life is household maintenance. It is often difficult to find reliable people, for good prices, within the area to come assist in the regular upkeep of a home. Some of these hassles include yard work, household repairs, minor mechanical issues, and even house keeping. So, how can we solve both of these issues at the same time? After discussing this for awhile, we came up with Strive.

What it does

Strive, is a platform that connects clients looking for assistance in their household upkeep with college-aspiring contractors who are background checked and eager to earn money towards their college fund. Perhaps the most unique part of thrive is that both the client and the contractor get to see a visual representation of the contractors progress on their college fund. Our website has portals for both the client and the contractor. The client's portal allows them to view available contractors, their specialities, their rates, and of course their college fund progress. The contractor's portal is set up like a dash board. The first thing they see is how close they are to achieving their fund goal. Below that, they can see new job requests, recent payments and recent reviews. As soon as a payment is made through our site to the contractor, the client will be able to see the contractor's college fund display increase in size, and know that they've made a difference in someone's life.

How we built it

We used HTML and CSS to stylize and create a visually appealing website with many dynamic features and creative information displays. The backend which represents the functionality of our login portals, as well as the organizing of information on both the contractor's and client's was built using Javascript. To facilitate the collaboration between the five of us, we used a Github repository where we were all able to work on our own tasks and commit changes when they were ready.

Challenges we ran into

Many of us are new to these programming languages, and have very little experience in web development. The first few hours of the competition were spent learning the very basics of html, css, and javascript. Knowing how far we were from the level we needed to be at to complete this project was stressful, but we are all very proud of each other for refusing to be discouraged, trudging through the learning curve, and creating a captivating website demo. Many of us are new to these programming languages, and have very little experience in web development. This led to many challenges as we were learning much of the basics of web development while also attempting to create a functional project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We feel as though we created a captivating website and a functional demo for it despite many of us having little experience in this field of computer science.

What we learned

In addition to many of us learning html, css, and Javascript for the first time, we also all learned how to use GitHub. Learning Github enlightened all of us to the twists and turns involved in group development, whether it's branches, pull requests, or merge conflicts. We also learned how to highlight each of our strengths within the group and contribute our unique abilities to the project, delegating tasks in an efficient and informed manner.

What's next for Strive

We would love to flesh out this website more and implement more functionality, allowing us to let clients and contractors to visit the website and explore all it has to offer. Additionally, if Strive were to go live, we've discussed several supplementary features that could augment the concept. For example, awarding a scholarship to the contractor with the best reviews.