shmads-project

Inspiration

Team Sh.M.A.D., Shelter Makes A Difference, ending homelessness matters to us. With several Veteran members of the team, and several youth members, our team has a special compassion to veteran and youth homelessness. So we created Nucleus: A social app that places people at the center of coordination and care.

what it does

Nucleus places people visually and systemically at the center of cross agency services. Homeless clients have profiles with volunteers attached around their profiles who can provide service or coordination. The power of nucleus is that everybody that is not a client is a volunteer. Everybody is a volunteer. This means CoC service providers and anyone

How we built it

To implement the application we followed a service oriented architecture where a ruby on rails API consumed JSON request and communicated with a disjoint IOS application written in swift, and a web app powered by AngularJS.

We used a postgres database hosted on heroku, and an open source AngularJS material design admin dashboard for the web portion of the application.

Challenges we ran into

A challenge we considered and will need to overcome in the future is a result of the limited access of people in need to smart phones. We considered a solution where a client could call in and apply for services through their phone by using a simple interactive voice response system (press 1 for X, press 2 for Y).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

With just a small team, we were able to put together a minimal front-end web application and IOS app that communicated using HTTP with a ruby on rails API server hosted on heroku.

We are proud of listening and understanding the severe resource constraints of the homeless and the CoC agencies. And being able to provide a cross agency and cross client coordination tool, because Nucleus is matrix coordination tool.

What we learned

We leanred the challenges involved with creating a system the utilizes cutting edge technology on one end (for the CoC members) but works for individuals who may not have access to smart phones or other technology (the people on need).

What's next for shmads-project

With the core group being graduating seniors, the potential funding would allow the team to fully flesh out the application to make Nucleus ready for transforming how CoC representatives tackle the problem of homelessness.