S.h.r.e.w.

The Project

Our project aims to connect the user with government programs and local organizations who can assist them. We plan to assist the user in 3 folds: Connecting the user with government programs, Assisting them in finding a job, and connecting them with community resources. Based on the information provided by the user, the application will recommend government aid programs the user may qualify for. The application will automatically filter through the details of each program and its requirement to determine which of the programs will assist the user the most. To help the user get restarted in life, the application will liaise with local businesses to assist the user in finding a job that is suitable to them. Local businesses will be able to sign up and put up requests for jobs which the application will automatically display to users who meet the requirements. Statistically many homeless and unfortunate individuals suffer from chronic mental illness or disease, so our application can also connect the user to community resources at their discretion. These community resources(if available) could range from food banks and shelters to psychiatrists or doctors. These resources will ensure that the user will feel that they are not alone and set them on the right path back to society. Finally our project will lower the stress currently put on social security by providing a centralized system in which the homeless can take over some of the responsibility and control over their path back to society. Our Website: https://sites.google.com/view/shrew-a/home

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Team Comments

Ever since we were little we would see homeless people on the side of the road, looking lost and helpless. But because we were too young and lacked the necessary resources, we were also powerless to help. Now with new skills and experiences, we created this project to help and give back to society.

Of the many obstacles we faced during programming, one which was most unique in its challenge was web scraping with unity. The amount of documentation online and examples was scarce and often of low quality. After 30 hours of scouring the internet and tinkering we were finally triumphant.

If we had more time we would implement biometric identification in the form of fingerprints and face ID. Due to inconsistencies with the code being able to detect our camera and our prior experience with OpenCV in python rather than C#.