Inspiration
We wanted to create an easy way for both people in need to request help and for others to send help. It's hard for a lot of people in this country to get by, and when times are tough it can be straining to meet important needs. On the other side of the scale, those of us who are fortunate don't always have the time to volunteer at the soup kitchen, but have some money to contribute.
What it does
Anyone in need can send a text to a designated number with the needed supplies and an address. Our service logs this request, and displays it on a website. On the website, a user can purchase any number of different items. We then process and fulfill the request by purchasing and delivering the supplies.
How we built it
We set up a texting service through Twilio that forwards texts to our server. Our server processes the texts and serves a webpage reflecting the request data. A user can then go through the website to purchase various deliverables. We process the the payment request and send an order confirmation text message to the person who will be receiving the deliverable. Actual delivery and purchase would have to be followed through manually.
Challenges we ran into
We had a bunch of front end formatting challenges. We had some problems with git. We had some problems with Twilio.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We created and completed end to end service. We compiled a bunch of external services to suit our needs. We implemented a pretty cool idea that could really help low income families.
What we learned
Some of us learned Javascript for the first time. Others tried front end development for the first time. On the backend we got exposure to some new apis and frameworks.
What's next for Pantry
- When some company implements a delivery api in the United States, hop onto that and automate deliver
- Better prioritization algorithm: our server chooses based on date requested which order to fulfill. A better prioritization algorithm could make the service even better
- Testing a user against the food stamp database: confirming that a user is in need requires another layer which is not present in this prototype
- Geofencing and scaling: limiting which requests are shown to individual locations
- Donation schedule: schedule donations per month
- Suggested donation list
- Custom item requests: A process for submitting a donation request for something other than the standard list of items.
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