---
title: 'Help your neighbors'
disqus: hackmd
---

Help your neighbors
===

**We are creating an open-source multilingual online portal where you can get help and help others in your local community.**

> "Think global, act local."

Humanity and the local-global volunteering community lacks a multilingual open-source portal to efficiently coordinate our efforts. The current crisis also shows that central support systems can become overburdened quickly so we must ACT ASAP.

Let's create an international movement of next-generation volunteering that can become a positive social norm - and can help communities even after this crisis, making a long-lasting positive impact.

## Table of Contents

[TOC]

## Beginners Guide

If you are a total beginner to this, start here!

1. Visit hackmd.io
2. Click "Sign in"
3. Choose a way to sign in
4. Start writing note!

# Why
* We want to help people in need by enabling volunteers, helpers to connect with them fast and safely to solve issues in local communities.
* As a consequence to the covid crisis, state support systems are overburdened.
* The most endangered age group (65+) have the least digital competency and people living in poor conditions also often lack access to the internet which increases isolation.

# What
We are creating a multilingual open-source portal aimed at enhancing neighborhood cooperation (volunteering) and ease the pressure on central/municipal social support systems.

## You can either:
* OFFLINE - If you see a need and can handle it yourself, you’re great! You don’t need to register the need.
* ONLINE - If you see a need on the portal, you can assign it to yourself (max 5)
* ONLINE - If you see and can’t handle a need, you can register it and the platform asks others to help

# To who
Everyone in need but especially:
* Elders
* Handicapped people
* Families, single parents
* Socially disadvanteged groups
* Illeterate people (Digitally or otherwise)

# We need help in these areas

* Web developers (PHP, Laravel, jQuery)
* Openstreetmap expert (integration, data structures)
* UX/UI/Graphic designers
* Testers (UI automated tests would be awesome)
* Volunteers for field testing
* Volunteers for translation
* Share this project with people who could help our cause

Project Timeline
---

gantt
    title Draft timeline

    section Development
    Prototyping           :a1, 2020-03-16, 40d
    The Global Hack      :a1, 2020-04-09, 3d
    Pan-European Hackathon      :2020-04-24  , 3d
    section Field testing
    Get feedback from 3 cities      :2020-04-17  , 30d
    

# How - the process

## Server setup

* An IT expert install the web application to a server (automated install script/Docker image will be developed)

## Software configuration

* The server owner (administrator) set the target zip codes (limited to the region to be served)

## Volunteers

Volunteers register to the system and specify the details about their schedule and other preferences.

As a volunteer you can specify 5 street names (and optionally, a range of house numbers) that you would like to cover so you get automatic email notification from those streets if someone asks for help.

The help requests can have 3 statuses:
* Open
* In progress
* Closed

The help requesters can mark their requests solved.
Also, if a volunteer marks a request as solved, the requester has to confirm it.
If this doesn’t happen the request will be automatically closed after 24 hours.

# Technology
* Laravel/PHP
* jQuery
* SCSS
* MySQL

# Licence

Open-source, [AGPL v3](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html)

# Source

https://github.com/Kr4z4r/joszomszedsag/

# Project website

https://joszomszedsag.com/

# Team members & Contact

* Gábor Rostás - Product owner
* [Gergő Rostás](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rostas-gergo/) - Lead developer
* [Gáspár Incze](https://www.linkedin.com/in/inczegaspar/) - Agile coach, Scrum Master, International team recruiter & coordinator - Email me: coach at inczegaspar dot hu
* Erzsébet Incze - Content writer, editor
* Krisztina Makra - Social media recruiter
* András Tóth - Designer, Content writer

# Other open-source solutions

## Local community focus

### Solutions based on city/street names/etc.

### Geolocation-based solutions

---

## Local & global focus

### Online decision-making, sharing resources

https://hackmd.io/@eaposztrof/HyuawuAII

### Long-term volunteer motivation, "social/hero token"

### Cross-country coordination

https://github.com/ch-covid-19

### Best practice database

### Geolocation-based community of practice

# Why we are better than XYZ closed-source portal promoting neighbourhood cooperation?

1. We design in the special needs of a quarantine situation and also keeping volunteers motivated
2. Nextdoor in available in about 15 languages, we will crowd-source translation to as many language as needed
3. Our project is open-source and you can host is as well, so there is no single point of failure.
4. Strongest privacy guarantees: no need to give away data of your local community members to a foreign company

# Risk reduction

| Risk | Potential consequences | Mitigation |
| -------- | -------- | -------- |
| Volunteer goes missing/get sick | Task will not be completed | After 48 hours email reminder, Put back to open requests pool after 72 hours |
| Volunteer with malicious intent | Criminal activity, Portal reputation loss | FB+phone or email+phone verification Public profile: Name, Photo, Address |
| Help requestor abandons the portal/request | Unknown state of request, frustration for volunteers, damage helpful intent towards others in need | After 24 hours the request is marked as completed. |
| Volunteer overload | - | Volunteer manages his/her own workload by taking as many tasks as s/he can handle, Can make profile inactive |
| No volunteer found in area | Demotivating for users | TO BE DEVELOPED |
| Registration to remote area | Fake, phishing or irrelevant requests | Admin selects the available (served) postcodes upon system install |

# User stories
---

Feature: Submit a help request to the portal
  As a person in need
  I want to ask for help (food, medicine, urgent task)
  To get help for my basic needs

  # The first example has four steps
  Scenario: Person in need can ask for help in the portal
    When They submit a request
    Then Volunteer in the immediate area get a notification
    Then A volunteer can take the help request to her/his name
    Then After the request is completed, it is marked as done

  # No digital competency or no internet connection available
  Scenario: Person in need can NOT ask for help in the portal
    When A family member, caretaker or someone else registers the need in the name of the person in need
    Then Volunteer in the immediate area get a notification
    Then A volunteer can take the help request to her/his name
    Then After the request is completed, it is marked as done
    
    
Feature: List help requests in my local area
  As a volunteer
  I want to see who needs help in my area
  To make sure I can help people with their basic needs

> Read more about Gherkin here: https://docs.cucumber.io/gherkin/reference/

# Links

## Openstreetmap

Web
https://www.openstreetmap.org/export#map=7/46.924/19.622

Download
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#Format
https://ftp.spline.de/pub/openstreetmap/
https://download.geofabrik.de/europe.html

Osmosis - processing
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis/Installation#Linux
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis/Detailed_Usage_0.46
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis/Detailed_Usage_0.46#MySQL_Tasks

Map features
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key%3ahighway
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key%3aplace

https://gdal.org/

Formats
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Converting_map_data_between_formats
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_XML

List of streets
https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/9816/the-best-way-to-extract-street-list
https://github.com/JamesChevalier/cities
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20125242/import-openstreetmap-data-osm-file-to-a-mysql-database-sql-file
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14705063/read-cities-and-streets-into-a-database-without-api
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2487656/database-for-streets-world-wide

# Misc

Alice & Bob talks :)
---

Alice->Bob: Hello Bob, what do you do today?
Note right of Bob: Bob thinks
Bob-->Alice: I will use Help your neighbor! portal to help people in my local community
Note left of Alice: Alice responds
Alice->Bob: Wow, that's amazing! I want to do that, too! :)

> What is impossible for one, it is easy for the many. [name=Humanity]

## Appendix and FAQ

:::info
**Can you improve this document?** Contact us and contribute your superpowers!
:::

###### tags: `Templates` `Documentation`