EmpowerYou

Igniting Meaningful Change Through Accessible Education and Equal Opportunity

Comment

Inspiration

The transformative potential of technology to drive social change has always fascinated our team. However, we recognize that not everyone has access to resources addressing the challenges faced by victims of sexism. In many countries, violence against women is increasing, and gender inequality is alarmingly common in workplaces.

We aimed to address these issues thoroughly. Our vision was to create a platform that serves as an all-in-one solution, providing support for women in need through enhancing education and career opportunities.

What it does

EmpowerYou serves as a platform for users and organizations to connect and foster a community. It facilitates the sharing of events, movements, values, and opportunities. Moreover, EmpowerYou offers regular mental health check-ins, providing users with moments for self-reflection and personal insight. These check-ins are complemented by mood-appropriate icons that engage users in a thoughtful manner. Additionally, a hotline service will provide users with emergency phone numbers for immediate support during times of distress.

How we built it

Our journey began with Figma designs and color scheme selections. We implemented these designs using the React framework and Vite bundler. Firebase played a vital role in enabling user authentication, hosting a NoSQL document database, and storing user-related data. React Router Dom handled page routing, and Vercel hosted our application.

Challenges we ran into

Designing a beautiful and user-friendly platform posed a significant challenge. However, through iterative design and community feedback, we achieved a visually appealing interface. Implementing interactions with posts, such as limiting likes and reactions to one per user, proved challenging, but we successfully managed this by tracking likes as user ID objects to prevent double likes per user.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a platform that fosters connections between users and organizations was an incredibly meaningful and rewarding process. Our user-friendly interface guides users to essential sections. Integrating sign-up, log-in features, and the networking component for creating and interacting with posts were rewarding achievements. Identifying organizations that align with our platform's mission was a crucial accomplishment.

What we learned

Technologies: I’ve extensively improved my comfort level with React and JS. Most importantly, I acquired valuable experience with Firebase, which was a crucial component of EmpowerYou.

Time Management: For us all, I believe I can say that time management is something we’ve improved significantly after working on this project while balancing academic obligations.

Dedication and Collaboration: Sticking to daily hours put into the project proved to be the right choice. Having mutually supportive and hardworking teammates during collaboration was paramount in meeting project goals.

What's next for EmpowerYou

Our vision is to expand the platform, offering more courses and chapters on various topics related to women's rights as well as enriching the platform's features. We plan to incorporate machine learning to suggest personalized content, including events and posts, and use AI to tailor advice based on users' checkup data. The hotlines feature will utilize location data and an emergency number API to provide immediate access to support. Collaboration with renowned feminist advocates to develop courses is a future step. EmpowerYou aims to engage larger organizations like UN Women and AWID for region-specific initiatives, advancing women's rights globally.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates