Overview
Excellence in education is what the Hope of Detroit Academy is all about. Both our campuses offer the very best technology, STEM programming, multi-cultural experiences, physical education, art, music, second language learning, extracurricular activities, athletics, clubs and field trip opportunities. At Hope of Detroit Academy, we focus on every child's individual needsHope of Detroit Academy is a REWARD SCHOOL, rated in Michigan’s top 5% by the Michigan Department of Education for three consecutive years. Our key highlights include 100+ year-old historic elementary campus, 3000+ alumni, 10 consecutive AYP status and state-of-the-art middle/high school campus. With 1.5 million dollars in grants and NCA accredited by AdvancEd is a launch pad for future.
Supernova Award Category
Tech Optimization and Modernization
The Problem
Solve for Tomorrow is Samsung's global contest designed to boost interest and proficiency in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), by challenging youth to demonstrate how STEM technological solutions can help improve their local community and impact their surroundings.This nationwide contest is designed to boost interest and proficiency in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), and challenges public school teachers and students in grades 6-12 to show how STEM can be applied to help improve their communities.
Hope of Detroit Academy participated in this prestigious contest. In this competition our students decided to eliminate issues around blights that included eliminating trash, abandoned houses, vacant field and tires in their hometown of Southwest Detroit. We wanted to use technology and help our community work towards a more sustainable future in their city.
Our Students had no experience in application building prior to the competition. More over, budget constraints and limited time added another challenge. Hence, we started our research on who could help us overcome these challenges and make the app development as seamless as possible. We wanted to use this opportunity to make an impact in our community, and win a share of $2 million in the Samsung Technology To Empower Students To Build A Better Tomorrow competition.
The Solution
Our Students wanted to build a sustainable application to solve the issues around blights. We researched different avenues online and Zoho Creator seemed the best way forward. Creator was very user-friendly, easy to navigate and support was available 24/7 with any questions we faced while making the app. We were happy to partner with Zoho as they're values align with ours in finding ways to help the community by giving opportunities and creating a greener, more sustainable workplace and education environment. Creator allowed us to create our Green Warrior app and used geo-located pins to mark the blight issues in Southwest Detroit and color codes them by issue. When a blight issue is resolved we change the color of the pin to green on the map to indicate that it has been cleaned. We are proud of what the students were able to accomplish. This application helped to change our city for the better and leave a brighter future for the students of tomorrow.
The results
The group struggled with how to build an app and where to start. We tried several platforms and failed until we finally found Zoho; which was user-friendly and had staff that was on call to help 24/7. Zoho was the only app developing platform that we could find where we could actually talk to a person who was available to help us with troubleshooting. With budget constraints they were the most affordable app beating out everyone else by several thousand dollars.
Green Warrior software is a very user/budget friendly and easy to access application. When we were working on abandoned houses finding out if they are city owned or privately owned in attempts to get them boarded up or torn down. One of the challenges faced was to create the geo-located pins, Zoho helped us understand what we needed to do focus. Zoho not only supported us to change the community for the better, but they also inspired us to challenge ourselves by learning about application development. We believe, the Green Warrior app wouldn’t have been created without Zoho's 24/7 support. Our students were awarded a $130,000 prize for our school.
Metrics
The Green Warrior app created with Zoho Creator has enabled a change rate close to 10% this year in it's launch and we're hoping to reach 50% in the coming school year. Out of the 425 blight pins identified this year, we'll have close to 225 sites cleaned up and turned into green zones. These sustainable transformation will be able to be applied to as many cities and locations as we want to help reshape local communities for the better.
The Technology
Zoho Creator is a low-code platform that enables users with minimal technical expertise to create, edit, and run their automated processes—it gives any organization the power of app development. Our students built the Green Warrior application using Zoho's low-code technology platform, Creator. The application includes features such as the ability to add notes and images within reports, as well as color-coded pins to represent one of the four types of signifiers.
Disruptive Factor
While competing in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition our students decided they wanted to tackle the issues of blight in their hometown of Southwest Detroit. One of our biggest challenges was not having any application development experience. Zoho Creator helped us create our application, Green Warrior.
This software is very user-friendly and easy to access. Furthermore, we were struggling to create geo-located pins, and Zoho helped us understand what we needed to do. This not only helped us change the community for the better, but also inspired us to challenge ourselves more by learning about application development. We are already impacting the community by organizing park cleanups that can be discovered within our application. Our students have been able to identify a problem within their community and found a solution by using no-code and low-code technology provided by Zoho.
The Green Warrior application has helped us transform our local city for the better by eliminating trash and adding sustainability into Detroit. We're very proud of how we've been able to utilize technology to make a difference in our community, while enabling our students to learn application development skills through their work on this application.
Shining Moment
Our students were awarded a $130K prize for the school for the Green Warrior App. We will be using this prize money to build outdoor classrooms, a science class garden, and an amphitheater to provide more outdoor learning and an eco-friendly learning environment. We work with: Green Tree Plastics (plastics into park benches), Class Community Social Services (helped identify 13 tire dump sites), and City Council District 6, Raquel Castaneda-Lopez