Afuera

Inspiration

I have personally had experience seen the toll that the pandemic caused on my grandma. She no longer is able to interact with my family and our places of leisure have been closing due to the COVID. Going outside to shop for groceries also causes great concerns for the elderly since some are getting targeted due to hate crimes. My team also had noticed the increase in loneliness and depression in the senior population. Due to the pandemic, the elderly have been stuck in their houses and unable to see their kids or grandkids. While some have spouses, many senior citizens actually live alone and have no one to talk to. Working with the elderly has made us realize that many of these problems can be alleviated by offering events and volunteer services. We believe it is essential for the elderly to interact more with others due to studies that show an increase in Alzheimer's disease for those who are less active. We would accomplish this by following safety precautions during the time of COVID and have medical professionals assisting them.

What it does

Afuera is a non-profit group that offers three main services for the senior population. The first service is a virtual reality experience for the elderly in which volunteers or workers for Afuera will teach and help the elderly with their VR experience. Many senior citizens were unable to travel or go out due to the pandemic while others have medical problems which prevent them from traveling far. Making VR easily accessible to the elderly can allow them to experience different places in the comfort of their own home with a minimal amount of space. The second service Afuera offers is requesting a volunteer. The elderly are able to request a volunteer to go grocery shopping or run errands with them since it can be difficult for the elderly to hold heavy groceries or do certain tasks. The third service we offer is events, such as going to the museum, park, or beach, which are accompanied by medically trained professionals and volunteers to assist the elderly during these events. We also offer transportation to and from the events.

How we built it

We first drew models of the website that we would like to correct and built a layout of the different services we offer. We then created a Figma model online to be able to build the website using React. The project is bootstrapped by create-react-app and in addition, we used react-router-dom so the website is able to continually run without refreshing after every page. Making the user experience more enjoyable with the flow.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into were formatting problems such as sizing and font issues while using Figma. Designing was a huge issue due to us wanting the best for the user experience and how to make it accessible to the elderly who might have trouble using online web applications. Another challenge we ran into was how to properly connect all the webpages together so that they would run smoothly. Working in a team of four we had many disagreements as to the vision of our project but we were able to resolve our differences by communicating and compromising with each other.

Whats next for Afuera

We hope Afuera can later be used to connect elders together virtually as well to meet other seniors in their neighborhood and get more involved in their community safely especially during the time of COVID. To expand the organization to enable better support and help for our elderly. We want it to be the most fun experience that they have ever experienced and we want them to feel young again and make them as excited as they used to be before going on a field trip with our Plan a Trip service. And we believe it is necessary for them to be able to improve their mental health by having interactions with other people and be able to still hold a sense of community with others.

Built With

• bootstrap
• create-react-app
• css
• html5
• javascript
• react
• react-router-dom