gap year in israel

by Harper Green

When Big Idea started back in September, I was really excited to learn about web development and expand my programming skills. I wanted to take away a new skill set that could help me in my future endeavors, as well as allow me to help others. After completing the coding course during the first semester and the Impact Month hackathon this week, I can happily say that I’ve met my goals.

We spent the first semester, the coding course portion of our program, learning and reviewing the basics of web design. We learned to code in JavaScript and HTML, to style a web page in CSS, and to be able to store and interact with data in Firebase and React. We practiced our skills by creating games and chat apps, and we spent time trying to figure out how we could apply what we’ve learned to help the community during our impact month.

Impact month was a three-week hackathon in which we were paired with an NGO to make an app for them. Since our class overwhelmingly decided that we wanted to create something that could help with mental health, an issue that we all felt was so prevalent in our current world, I was so excited to learn that the company we were working with was the Summit organization.

Summit is a mental health center based in Jerusalem that schedules activities and provides resources to people affected by mental illness. They asked us to make an app for them that would help people schedule and sign up for their events.

Although we had some hard and long days working through the structure and the code of the project, I am really proud that we completed Impact Month with a finished product. I hope that the app we created will provide people at Summit with better access to the activities (everything ranging from tennis to improv); I really believe that if our app enables their courses to have a positive impact on at least one person, the whole project was worth it.

(Two photos from the app they created)
Gap year in israel - aardvarkisrael
Gap year in israel - aardvarkisrael