Inspiration
On a daily basis, we as Muslims feel immeasurable pain every time we open social media and see images and videos of our brothers and sisters bleeding. As Muslims, though, we understand that we have a role to play in our Ummah, and that we must do what we can in order to help Muslims around the world, no matter where they are. This stems from our shared root - our 'Aqeedah. Unfortunately, however, mainstream media neither provides accurate nor sufficient reliable and accurate information about the situations of oppressed Muslims in many parts of the world, and as a result many remain unaware of their silenced suffering. The goal of Ummah Awareness is to combat this world of misinformation - the most powerful tools that we have are our awareness and education. We seek to provide Muslims with a robust source to learn about the situation of our global Ummah, and provide them with outlets to take the first steps towards making a difference by connecting them with trustworthy organizations working towards the noble cause of upholding the honor and dignity of the Ummah of Rasulullah (S).
How we built it
We built Ummah Awareness by first brainstorming about the best way that we can show current day issues in the ummah as well as different avenues that we as Muslims can take to help our brothers and sisters that are struggling throughout the world. We first created a front end that we used to deploy our libraries and test our user interface using sample data. We then implemented a backend that took in multiple news and first hand sources, as well as multiple donation streams that we created heuristics for to review their reliability.
Challenges we ran into
Some of the biggest challenges we ran into were dynamically finding news sources, finding reliable donation sources, and rendering a 3D globe with borders. Once we solved the issue of rendering the 3D globe with dynamic borders, the other issues were non blocking, so we were able to develop while addressing architecture issues in parallel.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
In an industry where it's very easy to take our skills and apply them in ways that are harmful to humanity in general, we are very proud to be able to take those same skills and use them to build something that will benefit the oppressed around the world. One of the specific aspects of our project that we are most proud of is our implementation of news filtration. In a very efficient manner, our software parses huge amounts of news information and deciphers relevant and trustworthy information, and throughout this process it opened our eyes, in many ways, to the realities of misinformation in mainstream media and developed our skills in facing this issue as individuals as well.
What we learned
We learned the most about the different trials that our brothers and sister are going through around the world, and how mainstream media hides these stories from the public. In addition, we learned a lot about how different news outlets have tech integrations that are available for the public to use
What's next for Ummah Awareness
The next steps for Ummah Awareness Inshallah is to take our app to the next level, and ship it with the hopes that the Ummah will have a better knowledge and understanding of what is going on in the world and how to help. Our main goal is outreach, and our future involves being the most accessible to as many people as possible.
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