EmpowHer<3 (ProtectHer)

Logo
IOS App Homescreen
IOS App Map Feature
IOS App Trusted Contact List
Android App Map Page + safety radius feature shown

Inspiration

As a girl and 2 boys who have a mother, sister and many other important females in their lives, hearing about all the dangerous situations that women have been in really made us emotional. We wanted to try and make a difference IN THE MOMENT. We want to try and STOP any violence against women before it happens.

What it does

ProtectHer is an app that is trying to prevent violent incidents against females before they happen. If a women ever feels unsafe, with one quick swipe of the screen, a predetermined list of close friends will be given a phone call and sent a text message notifying them that their friend is in trouble. Depending on the situation, the female can decide to notify the police/trusted organization in addition to her friends by swiping 2 times instead of once. Even if the contacted friends' phones are on silent, this app will make sure to set off the ringer, using a different ringtone than the usual, so the friends know that the situation is an emergency. The friends can track the victim's location from the maps tab of the app.

In addition to contacting her trusted friends/ police, when the the phone is swiped to trigger an unsafe situation, the victim's camera starts recording immediately, and posts the live feed to Facebook with the setting of "only me" so only the victim has access to it. This was she can decide what she would like to do with the video when in a safer solution. We included this feature in order to help victims recieve legal justice.

This app is compatible with both android and apple phones, and we have an alternative for non-smart phones. In order to help females who do not have smart phones, we have created a text alternative. The first time the number is messaged, the female is asked to configure her profile, which includes inputting her trusted contacts, and an emergency organization if she doesn't trust the police in her area. We will ask the user to put this number on speed dial, so if there is ever an unsafe situation, the service is easily accessible.

How we built it

We used Java in Android Studio in order to create the android application, and Swift in X-code to create the iPhone application. We also used the Twillio API, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and the Facebook API in order to implement all the functions we wanted to.

Challenges we ran into

A few challenges involved working with the external API's. Communication through the Twillio API and Facebook API's were slower than we would like (due to simulation of 2G/3G connections in our target communities). IOS currently had a recent upgrade which is not supported by xcode yet. Due to this we have to use the simulator to demo our app rather than a physical iPhone.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our dedication to Women Empowerment. We learnt so much about the struggles that some women go through around the world, and got to dedicate the whole weekend to the cause. It felt great being able to use coding, a skill that we all love, in order to help an issue that is so important. We are also proud that our app works on both IOS and Android phones, and we have a non-smart phone alternative.

What's next for EmpowHer<3

We hope to get rid of the function where we post the video recorded to the private Facebook feed of the victim, but instead we would like to send it to an organization such as Equality Now or Global Citizen, that helps fight a women's case so she receives justice. We understand that having a video of a negative event can be traumatic for the victim. We also hope to work on the design of the app, finalize some functions, and hopefully release it on the IOS/ google play store soon.