The Sisterhood

Landing page
Information page
Map page

Inspiration

As relevant as it is to 50% of the population, women's health resources can be difficult to find, especially for young women. Some may be afraid to ask for help, while others may not have anyone to turn to. Additionally, information is often spread across many sources, making it difficult to find the necessary specifics. Our team is dedicated to making The Sisterhood a comprehensive resource for women's healthcare information, advice, and a sense of 'togetherness'.

What it does

Our project includes multiple tabs so that users may gain a variety of knowledge. Our information page provides an overview of the many health concerns that women face, such as gynecologic cancer and menopause. Our map function allows users to find available resources in their area, such as women's shelters and clinics, and provides an overview of each. The map can also show how laws differ across states regarding women's rights, such as abortion laws and restraining order laws. Our forum allows users to post any questions, concerns, or anecdotes they have. Finally, our chatbot allows users to ask pressing questions and get immediate responses.

How we built it

We planned out the UI/UX in Canva. The frontend is done in React, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript(JSX), set up by Vite. We used Supabase as our backend and database. The map was made using Google Maps API and Gemini API. The chatbot was also created using the Gemini API. The website is deployed in Vercel, which also manages our secret API keys.

Challenges we ran into

When building the chatbot, we had trouble using the Gemini API through Supabase, and we eventually had to change our plan and manage those keys in Vercel instead. We had a similar issue when building the map with Google Maps API. While some of these challenges were mostly faced by specific members of our team, we all definitely faced some learning curves with working with a large set of foreign files. For instance, we learned how .env files work on a local machine vs someone else's machine vs a server, and we learned the importance of other setup files generated by Vite such as package.json.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As beginner hackers, we are so proud of creating a functional product and of how much we learned along the way! All of us had to pick up new technologies and languages, as none of us had experience with React or Supabase, and some of us hadn't previously learned JavaScript or HTML. We are also proud of integrating the Gemini and Google Maps APIs, as some of us were even unsure of what an API was before this hackathon. Overall, being new to these web technologies ended up being a hurdle, but a hurdle that we were able to conquer with enough determination!

What we learned

All of us learned new web technologies such as React and Javascript. We also learned how to use and manage APIs in a project, including calling them as well as the trickiness of managing keys for safety, and app deployment. Additionally, we learned the importance of version control, as we had many time-wasting merge conflicts along the way.

What's next for The Sisterhood

As of now, our forum only allows users to post questions. We hope to add reply and fully integrated reaction features so that users may converse with each other on the platform. We also hope to be able to embed more resources, such as instructional videos or articles in the information section, or otherwise include more animations and interactivity. Finally, we hope to increase the number of filters available on the map in order to allow users quick access to specific resources.