A way to make it much easier for users to find their nearest food bank.

Our inspiration for this app was seeing the news coverage of the miles and miles of queue in front of food banks at the wake of the recession caused due to COVID-19, and thus we wanted to make a way to make it easier for people to access their closest food bank and possibly a way to make it easier to know when to restock.

Our main goal for the app was for it to have a database of food banks and a real time number of how many packets they had left, and for there to be a map-based interface to make it easier for the user to find their nearest one.

We used android studio for designing the UI and implementing all parts of our code together. We used Firebase to enable User account creation and authentication, and tried to use the Google Maps API to find the closest food bank to the user out of a list of foodbanks stored in the firebase Realtime database along with the number of food packets that each food bank still has available to donate.

One of the challenges we ran into was a lack of familiarity with the tools we were using. It was hard, especially for me, to get used to using Android Studios since we had never used it before. Additionally, app development and cloud storage was also very difficult for us to use, but we persevered and learned how to effectively use Firebase.

Our entire team performed excellently, especially since for many of us it was our first hackathon. We all learned how to use Android Studio for the first time, and used Firebase as well for our first time ever this hackathon. Additionally, one of our team members had NEVER used Java before, and managed to teach himself all of the Java he used in the project. Not only did he accomplish this amazing feat, but he also singlehandedly built our login and registering system via FirebaseAuth.

Through this hackathon, we were able to acquire many skills such as App Development using Android Studio, Firebase Databasing, and the Google Maps API. These are some of the many accomplishments we are proud to have learned from this experience.

we plan on fully implementing our foodbank inventory system, as well as our google maps integration to direct people to their nearest foodbank. Additionally, we wish to add a system for community members to donate food to their foodbank, and log their donation through the app.