Wander Help

Pillar: Social Good

Inspiration

There are so many videos online showing abandoned animals who were dumped by their owner or never had a home in the first place, some of those ending with a happy conclusion with someone coming help. We all have a love for cats and animals in general so we wanted to give people the option to be more proactive, to be the person at the end of that happy video.

What it does

Wander Help is an app that works similarly to a blog post where people can report stray animals, or lost pets complete with their descriptions and their location for others in the community to see. Once posted it will appear on the homepage and the user will be able to use the information to find and help people, then update the status of the post to display whether the animal received help.

How we built it

We were all new to building an app from scratch so we used MIT App Inventor to help us in terms of both the design of the app and the coding aspect of it. MIT App Inventor allowed us to use JavaScript through block coding to create the app features.

Challenges we ran into

Our primary struggle was collecting and storing the data so that it can be accessed from every screen in the app. We also struggled with testing our app because the initial database we used, FireBase, was not compatible with iOS through MIT App Inventor. Sharing our working with each other was another hurdle we had to overcome because MIT App Inventor is not a collaborative platform. Since every member of our team was new to MIT App Inventor, we worked through a large learning curve to build with the platform.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to make our very first functional app as beginners
This is our first time participating in a hackathon so we are proud that we made it this far
Using an unfamiliar software to develop a functioning app
Learning how to use multiple types of databases, including FireBase, TinyDB, and CloudDB

What We Learned

We were able to properly communicate between each other and talk through the project together. We also realized how so much could go wrong even with something that in theory should be simple, and we learnt how to make use of the program and limited knowledge that we had.

What's next for Wander Help

Volunteers input their info and location so they get notified when strays are in their area
Donate to the cause
Vaccination status
Adoption methods
Collaborate with local shelters to house and help stray animals
Achievements for the users to reward them for the number of strays helped