As a Community Action agency, GLCAC Inc. serves more than 32,000 people from birth to over 90 each year through 29 programs designed to help families gain economic security and become self sufficient. Through adult education, child care and Head Start, social supports like financial literacy education and parent enrichment and job training and employment skills development, consumers are able to move forward to improve their lives and improve the community as a whole. One item that would REALLY help would be an app that people could have on their phones (more than 75% have Smartphones, largely due to the program through Mass Health that gives free smartphones to low income people) that would help them identify the organization agency or other entity to get the help they need. From emergency assistance to shelter, food and clothing, medical and behavioral health and other social services would be available at the touch of a button through an app. We have a printable booklet of these BUT an app would really work well- especially if it is in English and Spanish (we have translation available). Families and individuals could open the app, touch the appropriate category button and have the name, address, email and phone number right there. This could lessen the amount of time it takes for someone to get important services, like mental health services, or get their child into after school programs or even get to a food bank or pantry on the day they are open.
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© donate:code 2020
Frank Fitzgerald
So you peaked my interest.
The app is simple enough and should not take long to develop if it is purely informational. Is there any dynamic content or integration you see needed? Can you send me the Booklet. FrankdFitzgerald@gmail.com
With no login for the person and just informational data it should only take me a couple of weeks before I have it up on android and maybe a few weeks after that to have it on an IOS device only due to aprroval process and certs required by Apple.
How often is the information updated or is the data quite static? If there is no requirement for dynamic data or login information I don’t even need to have a server to host the system and therefore the data can reside entirely on the phone with no Monthly costs associated with hosting fees.
If you need some interface to update information or send out notification alerts the monthly costs could be around 1 to 2 hundred dollars a month depending on the size of the data. I would host it in the azure cloud under a new account I create for the CASA.
As for me….I live in switzerland after working as a COO and Quanitative Developer for a US based Asset management firm. For the next few months I have free time to donate and can create the application quite easily. I am not a wonderful graphic designer but I can build useful and decent looking interfaces. As for the functionality of the application that is not a problem for me.
I assume you have access to images and fonts currently used for your website that I can use? I would be using Xamarin C# which is cross platform for both IOS and android so there is only one set of code and it is quite simple.
Let me know,
Frank