Project Overview

As I watched COVID-19 slowly shape our everyday lives and constantly saw how it damaging its effects were I decided I needed to help somehow. After scouring the internet for ways I can use my technical skills to help fight the pandemic I stumbled upon a website called helpmainstreet.com; There mission was simple, by buying gift cards from small businesses we can essentially provide a "mini-loan" to these businesses so they can get much needed cash flow to keep the doors open. Seeing that these versions were only adopted for New York and San Francisco I decided to make one for my home state of New Jersey. The idea was simple, curate a list of all the small businesses I could find and very neatly put it on a NJ-themed website so loyal patrons can support their favorites businesses.

Check it out here! https://savethegarden.net/

Link to Repo

https://github.com/EddyYeung1/saveourfavesnj

How I built it

The tech stack was pretty simple for this website. All I did was use React and GitHub Pages to host the site. I also implemented Google Analytics to track site traffic as well as engagement with the site. My favorite part about building this was working with my designers Eileen Zhang and Rebecca Fu. Both of them not being from New Jersey decided to help me anyways and design my entire site quickly and beautifully. It is amazing how much people are willing to help if you just ask because before this I did not know either of them. I also learned how to network with companies to help me out. Initially, I really struggled in figuring out how I was going to get a bunch of businesses from NJ and also getting their gift cards links, so thats when I reached out to the helpmainstreet team. In collaboration with a startup, Lunchbox, they gave me a list for NJ they already had and gave me the ability to populate my site with over 900 businesses. I was really grateful and happy that I was able to connect with so many great people and work together to collectively fight the pandemic from all corners of the United States.

Additional Thoughts

Now that I am graduated I hope to add more features to the website and find more ways to help the businesses in NJ. Hopefully, some of my ideas will inspire others to help out their own communities and get through this together.