As a team, we created an application for Northside Learning Center in Syracuse, NY. The North Side Learning Center exists to aid in adult and youth literacy development, and to be instrumental in teaching self-sufficiency and self-actualization to refugees in the community. Most of the students at NSLC are refugees from countries in East Africa, primarily from Somalia.
The process to do community service at Syracuse University is very traditional and outdated through use of analog methods (from interest forms, scheduling, assigning classrooms etc.) It is also random and not strategic to exploit the strengths of the mentors to match the needs of the mentees. Our app will address this gap by matching the interests of the mentees with the specific skill sets of the mentors to create truly collaborative partnerships. The initial focus for the app will be Somali refugees in the Northside Learning Center (NSLC) in Syracuse.