Community Compass

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Inspiration

The idea for Community Compass was formed from personal relationships and real-life experiences. We noticed people in our lives struggling to find essential resources, such as food assistance, mental health support, or a quiet place to recharge. Someone might need help but not know about a food bank that exists just two miles away or a local community garden that offers free produce. This scattered information and serving people in need inspired us to create a unified platform.

What it does

Community Compass is a single, intuitive app that connects people with the resources they need. Once they complete a simple questionnaire, it is all displayed on an interactive map.

How we built it

The front-end consists of React/Vite for quick deployment, Tailwind CSS, and Leaflet for styling and the map. The backend was Python FastAPI due to the group’s familiarity with Python. In order to fill the map with resources and landmarks, we utilized OpenStreetMap, USDA SNAP API, and Little Free Library API. The database is SQLite for user-created map-markers. The Google Gemini API is used for a quick description of what services the resource provides on the map.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest challenge we ran into was ensuring map data accuracy and aligning with the category. We overcame this challenge by combining multiple data sources with fallback mechanisms for reliability. Two other minor challenges were Git merge conflicts and virtual environment issues regarding the latest Python versions, which lacked wheels for certain packages.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to aggregate data from multiple sources into a unified, consistent map in a responsive, usable, full-stack web app that people can use to support themselves. The elimination of needing to search multiple websites in order to seek the essential resources is invaluable for everyone.

What we learned

This was a great learning experience in time-management, full-stack web development, and API integration. Given only 36 hours, we were able to create a full-stack web app using React, Tailwind, and Python, using multiple API calls such as OpenStreetMap, USDA, Little Free Library, and Google Gemini.

What's next for Community Compass

Looking forward, we are looking to get into community partnerships, such as letting organizations update their own listings in real time, partnering with local agencies to verify accuracy, and tracking how many people we connect with resources.