BabyEquipVT
Project Introduction
The Baby Equipment Exchange is an already-established project through Vermont Connector, founded by Wendy Rice.
Parents donate their gently used baby equipment to the Exchange. The Exchange redistributes the equipment back to families with economic need through a network of social service and mutual aid organizations. The Exchange only works through designated agencies. Only equipment that is not subject to recall, hygiene concerns, or otherwise available through other programs (such as Be Seat Smart) is accepted.
Parents and organizations participate in the Exchange to close the loop between saving still-usable baby equipment from waste and helping community families in need.
Problem Statements
As interest in the project grew, so did the inventory. The original inventory management system did not scale up with the increased inventory size. The project quickly needed a new way to manage incoming donation information.
Project Users
Two main user groups are the focus of this project:
- Social service/mutual aid workers: identifying community members who may need baby equipment from the Exchange.
- Donors: supplying the baby equipment to the Exchange.
These user groups have slightly different problems. To accommodate the project’s increasing inventory as community interest grows:
- Social service and mutual aid workers need a secure mobile-friendly interface to access available baby equipment during client visits and to schedule equipment pickups.
- Donors need a streamlined interface to upload equipment information and schedule donation drop-offs.
Security for mutual aid workers needs to be increased to meet their organizations’ requirements. The current system, largely using online spreadsheets, doesn’t meet those needs.
Project Summary
Focusing first on launching a minimum viable product for a mobile web app for further development, we begin with these priority features:
- Account creation
- Inventory browsing
- Item donation form
Development is occurring on the Google Firebase platform, using JavaScript.
Project Details:
Client: Vermont Connector (Wendy Rice)
Project Manager: Kirsten Nielsen
Tech Lead: Nick Floersch
Related Sites: