After my junior year, I participated in the Summer Institute for Humanitarian Computing at Santa Clara University. The objective of this program was for high-schoolers to use their computer science skills to create solutions for the homeless community. Because the majority of the population--including those who are homeless--have access to a smartphone, our goal was to utilize this technology to combat the common problems that homeless people might encounter. This is the reason we created [name], a chat-based therapy application that is easily accessible from mobile devices.
[name] addresses the various mental health issues homeless people may face--drug abuse, alcoholism, depression, relationships, and anger--by providing someone to talk to about these problems. Our application allows users to connect with a therapist by using the built-in SMS chat functionalities of mobile phones. Using Java to code, we spent two weeks adding features, testing, and debugging our code until we had a solid product. Ideally, our app would be implemented by therapists from Catholic Charities, a non-profit organization working to reduce local poverty. Together, Catholic Charities and [name] will help make homeless people's lives easier by providing a means to communicate with therapists and provide help for their problems.
By the end of the program, we had a functional app that is still being used by Catholic Charities today. We also submitted our project, research paper, and poster to the Association for Computing Machinery Development Symposium, a humanitarian computing conference for social and economic development. Although we were not selected to present our project, I am proud that we were able to bring attention to the issues that our app addressed. I feel humbled to have participated in this program because I exercised my knowledge of Java to help solve important issues in my community. In college, I hope to continue serving the community by advancing my computer science skills. In this way, I can continue creating innovative software that positively impacts future generations.