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🌏 Help Myanmar Rise: Project Story

🔥 Inspiration

In April 2025, a devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar, leaving thousands dead, injured, and displaced. As someone born and raised in Myanmar, we witnessed firsthand how disorganized relief efforts can be — especially when communication infrastructure collapses. Inspired by the resilience of local communities and rescuers, we built Help Myanmar Rise to bridge the gap between affected regions, rescuers, and global donors.

🛠 How we Built It

Frontend: Built with React, styled with inline CSS, and deployed via Netlify.
Backend: Node.js + Express API with MongoDB Atlas for storing and retrieving submitted resource data and cached news articles.
Authentication: Auth0 restricts access so only verified organizations can submit updates.
News Integration: Uses the GNews API to fetch real-time articles. To preserve API limits and improve performance, articles are now stored and served from MongoDB.
Translation: Integrated Google Cloud Translate API for dynamic Burmese-English language switching.
Hosting: React frontend on Netlify; Express backend on Render.

📚 What we Learned

How to implement multilingual React apps using live translation APIs
Auth0 integration for secure access control
Efficient caching strategies using MongoDB
Building a full-stack app with scheduled news updates and third-party API integration
Deployment with domain routing and environment variables

🚧 Challenges

GNews API has a daily request limit, so I implemented a backend cache system using MongoDB to store and serve news articles, refreshing them only once per day.
Translating dynamically-loaded content like news and forms while maintaining smooth UX.
Ensuring role-based access control so only verified organizations can update data.
Designing a bilingual interface that works for both international and local Burmese users.

💡 Impact

Help Myanmar Rise empowers both local and international communities to take action fast during disasters. Whether it's donating to verified campaigns, reading the latest news, or reporting urgent needs — this app brings trusted relief efforts to life.