GroundUP

Helping teens find free, accredited and meaningful volunteering experiences in their local community, to upskill and grow through making a large impact in small ways.

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Inspiration

GroundUp was inspired by the need to make volunteering as a young adult more accessible, equitable, and accredited. Having recognized existing volunteering schemes, like the Duke of Edinburgh Award, come with high costs, institutional barriers, and limited access, enabling opportunities for these free local experiences ensures students that would benefit the most now have access to these enriching experiences. Every young person should have the opportunity to gain valuable skills, meaningful experiences, and formal recognition for their contributions, regardless of their financial background or where they go to school. By removing cost and exclusivity, we’re opening the door to free, local volunteering opportunities that empower teens to build their future from the ground up with no previous experiences.

What it does

GroundUp connects young people to free, local volunteering opportunities in their area, allowing them to contribute to their community while gaining real-world skills and experience. Through the platform, teens can filter opportunities by distance, interest, or skill area, ensuring they find something that excites them. They can also complete a quiz to discover roles that align with their personality and future career goals. Every hour they volunteer is tracked and verified, allowing them to earn certificates and skill badges that boost their CV or university applications.

Unlike traditional volunteering schemes, GroundUp is designed to be inclusive, accessible, and rewarding, giving every young person the tools to grow their skills, impact their community, and build a stronger future from the ground up.

How we built it

We created our website using CSS and HTML for the front end, and Django for the back end, creating the user login pages and profiles and interaction between the front and back end. The volunteering listings are pulled from sites on the internet using web scraping, and displayed on the listing page, again using Django to display these.

Challenges we ran into

There was a learning curve since we were all using Django for the first time and also had to get used to the git workflow. We had to change techniques to receive volunteering opportunities from using an API to manually scraping a website ourselves. This is because the Facebook API was causing difficulties.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating a functional website, and idea that we are proud of, with future improvements and work as we really believe in this idea.

What we learned

Sleep is important. And knowing Javascript would be helpful in making a website.

What's next for GroundUP

A fully accessible app and website where teens can instantly find local, free volunteering opportunities, log their hours, and earn recognized certificates for their contributions. We’re working towards partnering with local charities, community organizations, and businesses to expand the range of opportunities, provide real rewards and certificates for their LinkedIn and CV.

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