Women face several challenges as entrepreneurs and small business owners, including finding access to mentors or people who are willing to help them with their goals. These barriers often prevent women from breaking into their desired industry.

What it does

This app helps foster a community of like-minded mentors for women entrepreneurs and business owners by pairing mentees in search of a valuable mentor with a mentor who is already in the industry and will help mentees put their foot in the door.

How We built it

This app was built using React Native and JavaScript for the front end. Expo CLI was a platform used and the Expo client was used for the simulation on the IOS device.

Challenges We ran into

(Areeba) The biggest challenge for me was learning how to code in React Native. Only having a basic understanding of JavaScript and only having ever coded websites with basic HTML/CSS and JS, I first went in and familiarized myself with React Native. This required that I learned the basics of React and how it works with components first, which was a big learning curve. It was also a bit difficult to understand how to set up the development environment because this was my first time really delving into a software project like this. However, I followed guides online, watched several long YouTube videos and tutorials on React Native, and became comfortable enough to build this basic app.

Accomplishments that We're proud of

(Areeba) This was my first app using React Native, and I am proud of the fact that I was able to figure out how to get the navigation to work with switching between screens when the user presses a button. I am also proud of the stack navigator and title in the native navigation that I was able to add.

What We learned

(Areeba) Firstly, I learned the basics of React Native, including components, states, text, input, view, scroll, and more. I also learned how to test an app created with React Native with the Expo client, which simulates the app on a mobile device.

What's next for MentorMash

As we only had time to come up with this minimum viable product, there are many improvements that can be made to MentorMash. For example, our initial plan was to add a screen that takes the user's interests in order to better pair them with a mentor, but with our other team members not delivering, this was not feasible. Another improvement that could be made is a better way to search for mentors. Right now, users must search for mentors based on their interests, location, and other factors. However, an idea for the future is to automatically suggest mentors based on these factors so there is less of a burden on the user.

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