GoMama

Empowering Single Moms: GoMama - 🌟 Your Partner in Parenthood and Progress 🚀

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Inspiration

Single mothers face unique challenges, including the high cost and limited availability of childcare 🍼, balancing work 🏢 with parenting responsibilities 👩‍👧, and often, the isolation that comes with parenting alone. A report by Child Care Aware of America 📊 reported that the average cost of center-based daycare exceeds 40% of a single mother's median income in most states in the U.S. 💸

Female Empowerment: Empowerment 💪 comes from giving individuals the tools they need to succeed on their terms. For single mothers, flexibility 🕒 and safety 🛡️ in childcare are of utmost importance. A credit-based exchange system provides these and empowers women by giving them control over their schedules, enabling them to pursue careers, education 🎓, and personal development 🌱.

Community Engagement: Our platform recognizes the power of community 🌐 as it aims to connect single mothers who can support each other, sharing not just childcare but also experiences, advice 🗣️, and friendship 👭. This inspiration comes from the idea that shared challenges can lead to shared solutions, fostering a sense of belonging and reducing the isolation many single mothers feel.

What it does

Our platform revolutionizes childcare by empowering mothers with an AI-powered matching system 🤖 designed to seamlessly connect families with reliable, community-verified childcarers.

Personalized Childcare Matching: At the heart of our service is an advanced AI-powered matching service that analyzes available child-carers' schedules against your specific childcare needs, including hours and dates 📅. This intelligent matching ensures that your child receives care that fits into your schedule perfectly ✨.

Location-Based Filtering for Convenience: Beyond schedule matching, our app incorporates an additional layer of filtering based on location 🌍, guaranteeing that the top matches are not just perfectly timed but also conveniently located.

Community-Driven and Verified: Since trust and safety are paramount, our platform provides a strong, community-driven environment where every child-carer is reviewed and rated by other moms 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦.

Credit System for Flexibility and Support: Our innovative credit system is designed to foster a supportive network of mothers helping mothers ❤️. By booking a child-carer, you exchange credits, which are earned by providing childcare to others in the community. This system promotes a sense of mutual support and ensures flexibility, allowing a healthy work-life balance ⚖️.

How we built it

To develop our application, we utilized Flask's RESTful backend for web service efficiency and Flutter for a smooth, cross-platform user interface 📱💻. Our infrastructure was bolstered by Google Cloud's BigQuery for analytics and Cloud Functions for serverless operations ☁️🔍. We integrated the Google Gmail API and SMTP for sending automated booking confirmations 📧✉️, alongside the OpenAI API for an AI-powered childcare matchmaking system 🤖💡. Docker and Kubernetes ensured our app's containerization and scalability 🐳⚙️.

Postman played a crucial role in API testing, confirming the reliability and efficiency of our endpoints 🛠️. Leveraging the OpenAI API, we employed machine learning to match user needs with childcare providers based on specific hours and location 🕒🌍, streamlining the search for optimal childcare solutions. This intelligent matchmaking system, enhanced by Gmail API and SMTP for instant booking confirmations, significantly improved user experience by offering tailored, convenient options 🚀. Our AI engine continuously evolved, learning from user feedback to enhance match accuracy over time 🔧📈.

Challenges we ran into

Managing the app state in Flutter became incredibly complex due to multiple user flows, such as signing up, searching for childcare, making bookings, and reviewing other users 🔄. Using Provider, we created dedicated providers for user authentication, bookings, and reviews. This modular approach simplified understanding and managing state 🛠️.

We initially planned to leverage Spring Boot for building RESTful services. Our goal was to create a highly scalable, serverless architecture, involving the integration with Google Cloud BigQuery for our data storage and processing needs. However, handling dependency conflicts arising from the integration of Google Cloud BigQuery proved to be extremely difficult. We did not have enough experience developing in Springboot and resolving these conflicts required a deep understanding of dependency management in Spring Boot. Flask allowed us to rapidly develop and deploy RESTful services while still leveraging Google Cloud services, including BigQuery.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully designed and implemented an AI-powered algorithm 🧠 that accurately matches childcare needs with available providers based on criteria like schedules and location. Creating a platform that fosters a supportive and engaged community of single mothers and childcare providers is an accomplishment that goes beyond technology, addressing the isolation often felt by single mothers and empowering them to pursue professional goals 🚀.

What we learned

Google Cloud Services Utilization: We honed our skills in leveraging various Google Cloud services ☁️🔍, mastering BigQuery for insightful data analytics 📊 and Cloud Functions for efficient, serverless backend logic ⚙️, adeptly scaling these services to meet the dynamic needs of our user base.

Community Building and Engagement: Community Building and Engagement 🤝 became a cornerstone for our platform, especially vital in creating a supportive ecosystem 🌱 for single mothers through a childcare exchange network. Encouraging active participation 🙋‍♀️ was essential for fostering a vibrant community spirit, achieved by introducing gamification elements 🕹️, such as earning and spending credits 💳 for contributing to the community, which not only made the platform more interactive but also deeply engaging and rewarding for its users.

What's next for GoMama

Financial Independence: Enhancing the platform's financial empowerment aspect by introducing a digital wallet feature 💳💰. This step towards financial independence for single mothers using GoMama opens doors to new economic opportunities, reinforcing their financial autonomy and empowerment.

Enhanced Community Engagement: Expanding our platform to features that encourage users to share experiences, advice, and support, integrating forums, direct messaging, and social groups within the app can provide spaces for such interactions 🗨️👥.

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