BoG: What Are We Working On?
Check out Bits of Good's current initiatives as well as the team leaders for each project or non-profit organization. If you are interested, there are links to most initiatives below!
Angels Among Us
Angels Among Us is a returning non-profit organization partner (NGO) that is currently working with Wesley O’Hara, Katsuki Chan, Rohan Chadha, and Winnie Zhang this semester. These directors and their mentees are building a foster-matching web app that will allow AAU admin to make posts for dogs that need a foster home and allow potential foster parents to submit applications to foster the dog. The admin will then have more control over sending the foster to the best-suited foster parent and keeping each post up to date with accurate statuses/information while no longer relying on Facebook as a tool for business.
Angels Among Us is a pet rescue founded by LuAnn Farrell and Valerie Addington that has rescued 20,000 animals since 2009. They are dedicated to saving dogs and cats from shelters and high-risk situations in Georgia. Many of the animals who reach their program are over-bred, ill, injured, neglected or abused.
The mission of Angels Among Us Pet Rescue is to “Rescue One Until There Are None,” and dog by dog, and cat by cat Angels Among Us Pet Rescue strives to live this philosophy every day by saving as many animals as they can and raising awareness to educate the public.
Check them out: https://angelsrescue.org/
Canine Assistants
Canine Assistants is a new NGO working with Alexa Fazio, Akash Mahesh, Hemadri Dogra, and Evelyn Mitchell this semester! The team this semester will build a service dog database for Canine Assistants that will aid staff members in logging, searching, and tracking information on the dogs that Canine Assistants trains/places. It will house valuable static information -such as family tree, name, weight, gender, etc.- but it was also host important dynamic information - such as a dog’s demeanor, medical history, location, incidents, etc.
Founded by Jennifer Arnold, Canine Assistants has a goal to match service dogs with individuals who have mobility difficulties, Type 1 Diabetes, epilepsy/seizure disorders, and other special needs. They also pair Community service dogs in Children’s Hospitals.
Check them out: https://www.canineassistants.org/
Heart of Passion
Heart of Passion is a returning NGO working with Aparna Arul, Yiwen Zhao, and Jay Nagpaul this semester to create a budgeting interface that allows all users to automatically track donations/funding and current budget/spending.
Teen leaders at Heart of Passion organize retreats for teens with cancer to foster connections with others going through similar experiences and create lasting memories. Heart of Passion’s mission is to connect teens living with cancer to each other to form an emotional support structure in an environment that only teens themselves could create.
Check them out: https://www.heartofpassion.org/
Southface Energy Institute
Southface Energy Institute is a returning NGO working with Liane Nguyen and Avaye Dawadi this semester to create an online library and project plan builder of technical standards that can be searched, filtered, and aggregated in order to build a custom project plan that a user (builder, designer, architect, etc) may give to their construction teams (or other stakeholders). This makes it easier to implement standards and troubleshoot issues with installation.
Southface is an Atlanta-based nonprofit with a mission to support sustainable homes, workplaces and communities through education, research, advocacy, and technical assistance. Their EarthCraft Program is a building certification program that works closely with professionals in the building design and construction industry to create healthy and efficient structures.
Check them out: https://www.southface.org/
Volunteer Management System
Volunteer Management System is a new NGO working with Heidi Lau, Colin Flueck, and Emmaly Nguyen this semester to produce a platform that is intended for non-profits to easily host volunteer events and volunteers to smoothly participate in events.
The target non-profits recruit volunteers to assist in their operations. They host regular events for volunteers to service.
Brain Exercise Initiative
Brain Exercise Initiative is a new NGO working with Tejal Dehake, Samarth Chandna, Da Hee (Sophie), Xingyi Luo (Shae), and Tyler Tam this semester. They are working on creating an Analytics Dashboard Website where BEI chapter presidents and administration can search patient progress and view analytics all on one interface. They are also working on a BEI app that allows patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s to use to connect to volunteers or get assistance referred to them.
Brain Exercise Initiative is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by UCLA student Esin Gumustekin. She uses research by neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima to construct daily brain exercise packets that consist of math, reading, and writing sections. Volunteers visit retirement homes and work with each senior to complete these packets in hopes to improve their memory loss. The initiative has grown to encompass over 1200 volunteers and 80 chapters across the world.
Check them out: https://www.brainexerciseinitiative.com/
Product Maintenance Team
Qihui, Schezeen Fazulbhoy, Yatharth Bhargava, and David Pang are working together this semester as part of the PM team. This semester, PMT will be working with MapScout and Healing4Heroes.
MapScout is any non-profit that aims at leveraging MapScout in order to generate their own interactive resource maps. H4H is meant for military service members, veterans, and wounded service members to be paired with trained canines.
As the Product Maintenance Team, they hope to support non-profits that have transitioned across the previous semesters and still have ongoing support, maintenance, and development requirements.
Infra
Tejas Mehta and Nitin Paul are the overseers of the Infra team this semester. The purpose of the Infra Team is to empower our developers with the necessary tools and resources to build high-quality, robust, and scalable applications in a more standardized way.
“Ultimately, we want to build tools and infrastructure that will assist developers and EMs. For this Fall 2023 semester, we are planning to dockerize a majority of projects that are in Bits of Good as well as completing Netlify migrations for the applications that haven’t yet been migrated. Sprints 4 and 5 will be experimental sprints for which we as a team will create a proposal for what we should work on that will be most beneficial to Bits of Good. More details to come when the proposal is decided on and approved by engineering exec.”
Bits of Good strives to work forward for non-profits and all its members! We look forward to seeing every project come into fruition.
Woo! Hyped for y'all this semester. Props for spinning up an infra team to support and maintain long-term projects 🙌