Volunteen

A page that tracks your service hours
The page where you can view opportunities you've matched with
The first screen of the app

Inspiration

As students that are active in our school communities, we’ve noticed the commercialization of volunteering as a result of increasingly competitive college admissions. Clubs that provide volunteer opportunities for students such as Key Club and Beta Club are often joined out of a sense of necessity; students are afraid that they won’t be able to get into college without 50-200 volunteer hours or clubs to boost their resumes. These clubs limit accessibility. Many of them require fees to join and they often pick volunteer opportunities rather than letting students pursue organizations and causes that they're passionate about.

What it does

Volunteen matches teen volunteers with nonprofits that are looking for helpers. Two platforms exist within the app, one for volunteers and one for charities. Charities must be approved to post opportunities on the app which allows us to build a community of trustworthy organizations. Teenagers can filter opportunities by age and cause, allowing them to explore different purposes and become familiar with a variety of non-profits. Volunteen allows volunteers to dip their toes in different topics with the hope that they will find one they're passionate about, leading to positive, long lasting relationships with doing good.

How we built it, challenges we ran into, and accomplishments that we're proud of

The process to reach our final product was filled with frustration and perseverance. Our team name is “Combatting Homelessness” because our original plan had to do with an app that donated money to help people struggling with homelessness. But the more discussions we had as a group, the more we realized that what we really wanted to do was solve a problem that we knew intimately, one that affected all of us as strongly as it affected our community. Completely rebooting our whole project was a difficult transition, but one that taught us the importance of flexibility, resilience, and meeting the needs of our peers. After various coding issues, as well as limitations set on us by timelines and individual skills, we are proud to have created an app that connects kid volunteers to charitable organizations, bettering student lives and our community.

What we learned

We learned about how important it is to communicate. Throughout the planning, development, and presentation of our app, we struggled to find times to meet and work together. We were all incredibly dedicated to the project, but as juniors at competitive high schools and members of sports teams and clubs, we often couldn't meet at the same time. Delegating tasks to different group members was essential for the success of our project, and we learned the importance of having a strong foundation, built on a solid idea that the entire group could get behind.

What's next for Volunteen

We've reached out to a few different non-profit organizations in our local area, including an animal shelter and a center to help uninsured working adults with medical care. Next for Volunteen is approving more non-profit opportunities and refining certain design elements within our app to increase accessibility. To accomplish this goal of inclusivity, we plan to implement UX design practices recommended by employees of Lenovo.