This project was completed by Rachel Walter for TechTogether Boston 2020
Devpost Submission: https://devpost.com/software/techtogether2020
Find on the Web: https://helpmetoo.tech/
I am a December 2019 graduate of University of Maryland, College Park with a major in computer science and a minor in women's studies. I've always wanted to use my technological skills to contribute meaningfully to social good and especially women's issues. This project was inspired by my course work at University of Maryland (in both fields), the work of my sister (who contributes to research on restorative practices being applied to schools), and 36 hours straight to code (and StackOverflow)!
During my last semester at University of Maryland, I took an introduction to data science course and found the process of data exploration, visualization, and analysis super fun and fascinating. When brainstorming, I realized there was a ton of openly available data sources that could create a wholistic, insightful view of sexual violence. I gathered U.S.-focused data, global data, and even non-traditional data (like Google N-grams data). All data and data sources are credited and explained in depth on my webpage.
When I was researching data and information for this project, I was shocked at how difficult it seemed to be to find state-by-state resources or policies related to sexual violence. I even saw during my data visualization and data analysis "Past" section that the definition of sexual offense is not consistent from state to state. During my search, I began finding some tools hidden in the depths of large organizations, like RAINN, that were useful but difficult to locate in their large websites. I felt that victims deserved an easier and more effective way to locate resources. I make the national hotline front and center and provide multiple tools for locating local or state-level resources and shelters. This portion of the project was completed with HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript.
Finally, I was inspired by my women's studies coursework, and my sister's restorative practice work in education to introduce TechTogether to restorative/transformative justice work. It also includes some digital art pieces I made using GIMP.