Disaster Chari-tech

The one-stop shop for supporting charities for people struck by disaster.

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Inspiration

When a disaster strikes, like Hurricane Ian, many charities appear. People may not know which charity to donate to and want their money to go directly to those in need. Unfortunately, large charity companies have pocketed donor money and used it for personal use. Disaster Chari-Tech is made to create transparency between the donor and the charity.

What it does

This is an app that can link users to charities, either through a specific search or through a cause. The main page has “happening now” disasters, so viewers can easily find a current disaster. Once a cause is selected, a list of charities will appear that are currently providing aid to those affected. Each charity will have a rating and data detailing how past donations have been used; we have not fully implemented this feature. We also have a login page that users can use to login or create an account that will keep track of their past donations and ratings.

How we built it

We used the Flask framework to build an interactive web application using HTML and CSS for the frontend, and python for the backend. We also used a postgreSQL database to store user login information. Finally, we used Heroku to deploy the website.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, we had a lot of trouble with setting up our environment. We intended to use React with Flask, but due to the amount of time spent trying to prepare these environments with no success, we decided to stick with plain HTML and CSS to develop the front end of our web application. Additionally, we had a lot of trouble with git merges, since the pycache files cause a lot of merge conflicts. Overall, we had a bit of a learning curve with version control, as it was a component of collaborative project development that none of us had much prior experience with. Another major challenge we faced throughout our project was integrating the database-- but, due to persistence and grit, Sara was able to successfully implement the database and its functionalities.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Learning something new is always an accomplishment to be proud of. For three of our team members, it was our first time using Flask to create an application. Learning how to use and navigate the technology is an accomplishment we are proud of. Additionally, we are very proud of the overall design of our website-- front end/design was not really a strong suit of any one of our team members going into the hackathon, so it took a lot of learning, effort, and collaboration for us to eventually produce an aesthetic product that we are proud of.

What we learned

We all learned something new, we challenged ourselves, we tested our physical and mental limits. As mentioned before, we did not have much experience with Flask or front end development. We learned how Flask can be used for website development. We learned about button design in HTML and CSS. We learned how version control can be effective in storing old and new code so we could keep track of our work.

What's next for Disaster Chari-tech

There are a few things that lie in the future for Disaster Chari-tech. For starters, we would like to fully integrate a charity dataset with information on their expenses, donation allocations, current projects, and more. This will allow users to have access to live information about current issues and the charities that support them. Users will be able to read over the ratings and information and decide which charity to donate. We would also like to fully develop our "About Us" and "Volunteer" tabs, as part of our final, polished site. "About Us" would contain information about our cause. The "Volunteer" tab would have information on where and how users can volunteer their time to help those in need.

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