🌎 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 🌎
Don't let the weight of climate doom and other global issues crush your spirit! It's easy to feel powerless in the face of such overwhelming problems, but don't give up hope. The truth is, the most effective way to create change is by starting in your own backyard. That's right - by taking action on a local level, you can make a real difference and inspire others to do the same. That was our inspiration for our project!
One powerful way to spark change in your community is by reaching out to your elected officials. Of course, emailing your MPs can be a bit intimidating and time-consuming, especially if you're not sure what to say. But don't let that stop you! The good news is that you don't have to go it alone. Thanks to AI technology, expressing your concerns and making your voice heard has never been easier. Let's work together to make a positive impact on the world around us!
What it does
EcoEcho starts by asking our users about their stories and what they care about. Then, it uses this inspiration to write a good Cohere AI prompt. The result is a personal, persuasive AI-generated email that can be sent to local politicians.
How we built it
To build EcoEcho, we utilised React, Node.js, and Cohere. We first designed the UI, set up the development environment by installing the various modules we would need, developed the backend and frontend concurrently, integrating Cohere. We connected the two ends, and then tested and debugged our application.
Challenges we ran into
A couple challenges we faced were:
- Integrating AI into our application. OpenAI could not be hosted on a local server, but hosting our own domain was not a simple task, and we ended up having to make the switch to co;here's AI, which we could run locally.
- Formatting the front end, specifically with the style sheets created from Rendition, was a hefty task. Rendition recognized all the components we needed, but the organization of them was tricky to work through.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of creating a full, functioning website in one weekend! As well as having a use for it that can be appreciated anywhere in Canada, something that would actually help bring the change that is always needed.
What we learned
We learned the React framework in a couple of days, and learned how to integrate AIs into our code, it being much simpler than we expected it to be.
What's next for EcoEcho
EcoEcho is an application with a huge potential to grow. There are some new features in the works, such as a petition signer, a contact information gatherer, and a community program guideline. These are all components that would be great to have on-hand in the same place, and EcoEcho would be the perfect place to hold them.
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