Anchor

Inspiration

Merriam Webster defines belonging as "close or intimate relationship." It's an important part of our day to day lives but also something that we often take for granted. As an immigrant, this sense of belonging is something that might be hard to foster or maintain, especially if they don't know where to start or who to talk to. Our goal was to create an easy and safe way for immigrants to connect and anchor themselves to their new community.

What it does

Anchor helps create and maintain a sense of community by allowing users to share their stories and experiences with each other. Anchor is also a safe space for users to ask questions, gather feedback, and offer support to their fellow immigrants.

In addition, Anchor has themed information collections with useful information, such as "How do I apply for a credit card?" or "Is there public transit near me?" that users can access.

How I built it

We decided on a tech stack that fit both the open-source nature of the challenge and stable technologies in order to provide the most usable product at the end of the weekend.

Challenges I ran into

While not all of our team members were initially familiar with the tech stack, as a team, we divided and conquered.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Adding a text-to-speech component that reads user entered text. We also managed to implement many fully functioning features with the ability to easily add on the the application while tackling some of the most technically difficult features first.

What I learned

Privacy and a sense of safety are key factors that affected how we developed our app. Building a sense of community was important to our team and that is represented in our finished application.