QueerComm

slide deck title screen

What is It ❓

queercomms is a platform for queer communities to support one another and help individuals in need fund anything from gender affirmation procedures to next month's rent.

Background 📄

according to truecolorsunited.org, queer youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their non-queer counterparts. they write, "It’s estimated that about 7% of youth in the United States are LGBTQ, while 40% of youth experiencing homelessness are LGBTQ." many of these youths have trouble securing shelter and continue to face these difficulties into adulthood.

moreover, it's well-known that trans people are one of the groups most likely to face homelessness. and according to transequality.org, "one in five transgender people in the United States has been discriminated when seeking a home, and more than one in ten have been evicted from their homes, because of their gender identity."

the idea for queercomms came from our use of tumblr and the prevalence of posts from queer individuals facing financial hardship.

What it Does ✨

queercomms allows queer individuals to receive donations and support from others in the queer community. users can make posts asking for donations as well as help others in need. for users who are uncomfortable receiving donations, there is a "commission" functionality where they can offer various services such as art or jewelry in order to accrue funds.

How We Built It

Backend: Django REST API framework (Python) with PostgreSQL database, hosted on Heroku
Frontend: Ionic Angular (TypeScript) ## Challenges We Ran Into We had some trouble with set-up (especially just downloading all the node_modules). It literally took one of us more than 3 hours to get frontend set up. We also had a few CORS errors with our API as well as confusion about async and Promises. Learned about Native Ionic plugins not working on browser unfortunately. We had to cut our scope down by a lot, which was good, because we've made the mistake of not doing that in other hackathons, but it was also a bit disheartening because we had originally planned to integrate a payment API, the ability to add pictures, and so forth but it wasn't feasible in the time we had. But! For the the time we did have, we were glad that we didn't give up.

Accomplishments We're Proud Of

Working with Django REST API framework which we were unfamiliar with
Managing our scope so that we turned in an actual project, even if it was a bit bare bones
Separating our codebase into two repos, so that it was more manageable
Doing all of this while starting late and staying up late!

<## sources 📙 [1] https://transequality.org/issues/housing-homelessness

[2] https://truecolorsunited.org/our-issue/%3E