Overview

Community Change is a community-driven crowdfunding platform that enables residents to fund small local improvement projects in their neighbourhood. Rather than waiting for council action, users can create fundraisers and collect pledges to support initiatives such as community murals, library resources, youth programs, park upgrades, and other local projects.

This was the first full stack application I developed from scratch as part of the She Codes Plus Program. We were given the freedom to create any type of fundraising platform, and I chose to focus on empowering local communities to create positive change in their own neighbourhoods.

Target Users

• Local residents who want to improve their suburb or neighbourhood but lack the time, resources, or influence to navigate council processes.
• Community groups seeking funding for small-scale local projects such as murals, youth programs, library resources, and community events.

Tech Stack

Key Features

• Functional sign up and login system
• Create and manage fundraising campaigns
• Make pledges anonymously or with a visible username
• Token authentication and user management
• Role-based permissions and access control
• Fundraiser editing and management

What I Learned

Building Community Change introduced me to full stack development and gave me a practical understanding of how frontend and backend systems work together.

• Designing and consuming REST APIs
• Building user interfaces with React
• Creating models, serializers and views in Django
• Implementing authentication and permissions
• Deploying production applications
• Debugging issues across the full stack
• Planning and delivering a complete project independently

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Christina Huynh for the banner artwork, and to Google for the fundraiser card images used throughout the project.