The Bronx Community Navigator

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  Bring Bronx Residents and Community Resources Together.

Inspiration

When I was a student at a CUNY college, I did not have enough food to eat and need resources.

Although my campus provided some support, it was far and limited. I live in Bronx Community #2, which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the bronx with limited resources and a low education attainment. As someone who lives in the area, I discovered there were resources available, however there was an overwhelming information on Google and some of the resources were not verified. Many times, I had to walk around the neighborhood to see about availability of resources such as food bank. I thought that if I was experiencing a lack of community resources may neighbors also had difficulties.

In 2018, NYC Community Health Profile reported that District 2 (Longwood/Hunts Point) had the highest percentage of adults who had less than a high school diploma and the lowest number of college degrees in All of NYC. In Bronx Community District 2 alone, only 16% of residents have degrees compared to 83% of residents living in Soho NY.

I aim to solve this problem by creating The Bronx Community Navigator so the residents will not have to go through a large system to get accessible resources in their neighborhood.

As a Social Worker, I want to give back and develop new skills to aid to support the community that gave me so much when I was a student.

What it does

1. Unite Local Community agencies with Bronx Residents with Human Verified Information via website so Bronx residents can visit and explore accessible resources within their communities. This includes food, clothing, education, and events.

2. Interacts Bronx Residents to the Advance your Education and Career Prompt to explore educational aspirations and institutions in the Bronx. Users can also receive a friendly checklist guide of the steps to advancing their program and enroll in GED programs, college, or other free to low-cost vocational programs.

How we built it

This is my first time doing this type of work. So, I first thought about drew what I wanted the website to look like. Then I started locating data and creating data list to verify the existing of resources within Community Board #2. Then I took a few of those resources that I knew or viewed on the web and use our previous knowledge and reviewed the organizations website for legitimacy. I took my information and placed in the Google.dev and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite, and limited addition of ChatGPT, we build a site that most users would be familiar with viewing.

Challenges we ran into

Verifying community resources is tedious and slow, sometimes the Google.dev wrote the code wrong and developing ways users can interact with the navigator versus just "clicking" took time with trail and errors.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was a passion I thought of in 2023 but did not have the skills or team to support this idea. I am very proud that I was able to bring this idea to reality.

What we learned

Thoughtful ideas can come to reality with the right tools. I learned that I am a life learner and I can contribute to society using coding by availing of these programs at NYPL.

What's next for The Bronx Community Navigator

To find a place to publicize it, create an advisory board to test it, ask for SYEP working aging 18 years and older to call and visit local communities to verify and for me to visit local community agencies and organization to get support. Eventually, expand it to Community Board #1 in The Bronx.

Built With

• googleaideve;
• nypl