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Landing page
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App page
Inspiration
For our website idea "WardTO" We were inspired by the unfortunate events that are surrounding the global pandemic. More businesses are unable to stay open and less jobs are available in person due to the lock down. Along with the lack of jobs, more individuals are facing evictions and could possibly be homeless. We decided to brainstorm different solutions that would assist this group specific and came up with our final idea
What it does
Our idea is creating a website that would help homeless individuals locate shelters across the GTA and give them the option to find out whether or not they carry PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) in the shelter they decided to reside at. The website would be able to locate any local shelter within the user's vicinity and provide them with a list of at least 5 or more available shelters in place, the time period you're able to remain at the shelter of your choice and directions for it. The website would also give you the option to input a new shelter into the system, helping us create a safe haven directory that would better assist those who are less fortunate.
How we built it
Before the website was coded, our designers focused on creating a User Journey of what the typical user would take when they opened the website. For the design aspect of WardTO, Figma was used to plan out the home page and gradually take the user from there to search for the nearest shelter.
Our Developers decided to use HTML and Bootstrap to simplify the development process. To maintain an efficient workflow, we used GitHub for version control.
Ward is currently hosted on Firebase Hosting, which was very simple to setup once we created our Firebase project and initialized the repository. We also used the Google Maps API to display the interactive map on WardTO.
The dataset used in WardTO is from the City of Toronto: https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/daily-shelter-occupancy/. It is composed on daily occupancy rates of shelters, addresses of those shelters, and the shelter prerequisites.
Challenges we ran into
One of the challenges we ran into is trying to narrow down what we wanted to create. There are many great ideas when it comes to applications, website and etc.
Another challenge that came up was the fact that is completing a project virtually, through a computer and away from one another. Last year has still affected this year greatly and while we're slowly finding out more solutions to this new reality, it was a unique time trying to connect with everyone.
One thing that was a minor challenging was figuring out what type of colour scheme we would use for our website. After a lot of looking through our choices, it was decided that we would go with lighter blue tone for the website and use purple as a secondary colour to combine.
On a technical note, our website wasn't rendering any images and styling. A little debugging revealed that we were referencing files outside of the /public folder; Firebase only looks at that folder. So we moved those files to /public and it was solved.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud to have been able to find a team that could collaborate so well and construct a team project that would normally take place in person. The internet has had so many improvements over the last 10 years and without it, this wouldn't have been possible for us to connect through this hackathon online and communicate via discord with the strict time frame we were given. Another accomplishment is that the website came out beautifully and everyone was able to contribute successfully.
What we learned
No idea is too small nor big to take on. The problems we came up with were all related to the pandemic and while there are many different solutions to come up with for a topic like that, our main focus is better assisting the more vulnerable group during this chaotic time and it was the homeless community. Everyone deserves to have a warm bed, food and home security. If we can make one individual's life less stressful when it comes to finding shelter then our website has completed the objective we had.
What's next for WardTO
The next step for our project is expanding the area we cover within our website, currently the shelters in our systems are located in the GTA but our goal is adding more locations in the near future and open up our directory to other areas that aren't necessarily in North America. The homeless community is large and if we can encourage more support in creating a larger network of shelters listed then it would be awesome.
Another plan for this website is adding a feature that would locate public transit near by and a list of assistance programs that specifically help those who are less fortunate while the lock down is still on going.
We would also like to add a feature that updates our listings everyday with new data from the City of Toronto.
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