Code for Philly volunteers give back to our community by donating their skills and time towards not-for-profit, civic-minded, open source projects. Browse our community’s project directory to identify where you can volunteer.

New to Volunteering?

If you’re new to volunteering or creating your own project, please check out our Projects 101 Blueprint slides.

For detailed advice on starting your own project, check out our own github ‘getting started’ project repo.

FYI - All our Projects 101 content is open source. Submit your own pull request to make it better with your own suggestions!

Remember, you’re a part of a national community of civic hackers

Check out Code for America’s project page for more opportunities to volunteer or for inspiration on the next project to start here in Philly.

Looking for our Code for Philly Civic Cloud hosting information?

Check out our documentation and github workflow here

Philly Auto and Parole Commenting

ABOUT

Philadelphia Auto and Parole is a re-entry program to provide formerly incarcerated individuals and youth transitioning back into society an opportunity to earn a living wage through courses in automotive repair. In order to financially support the classes, Philly Auto and Parole functions as both a repair shop and an educational program.

In 2015, the one-year unified recidivism rate (re-arrest of a previously incarcerated individual) for people returning to Philadelphia was 33.9%. Looked at differently, this means that of the 24,089 people released to Philadelphia from…

 Public Site

Nationalities Service Center - Adopt a Famliy App Commenting

Who we are

Nationalities Service Center is Philadelphia's leading immigrant and refugee service organization empowering immigrants to thrive in our communities and pursue a just future. NSC provides comprehensive services to immigrants and refugees in the areas of legal protections, community integration, access to health and wellness services, English language learning classes, employment and case management programs. The Refugee Resettlement program welcomes 200 refugees to Philadelphia annually. This program provides vital services and resources…

Quick Click Keyboard Commenting

In a quick survey I did in the Muscular Dystrophy community, over 70% of computer users use a mouse and on-screen keyboard, yet so much interaction is done through hover functionality and hotkeys. There are minimal tools and web accessibility practices out there to make computer usage fully accessible to mouse/touchpad/trackball users. These limitations become even more apparent with specialized software, such as CAD and video editing applications. Would anyone like to help me build something to accommodate this group, of which I am a part?

This app I'm trying to have built is a more…

UliftU Website Redesign Commenting

UliftU is a community organization that seeks to provide re-entering citizens with the skills and certifications necessary to become Crossfit coaches. The organization is relatively new and has made a preliminary website designed to communicate their goals and purposes to both partners and potential participants.

They are seeking to update the website to make pertinent information more accessible to their potential partners and participants, allow UliftU to recruit partners and participants, increase website SEO, and make it easier for anyone to update the site to have the most…

 Public Site

Philly Bailout Commenting

Project Description

The mission of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund is to end cash bail in our city. Until that day, we post bail for residents who cannot afford to pay.

Currently, we use the google suit (google sheets, google voice, etc.) to manage the bail process. However, with hundreds of requests a month we're reaching the limit of what these can do.

We'd like to move to a system that will allow us to

  • track requests in a consistent, structured way
  • ensure data integrity, even with multiple users
  • help automate simple, repetitive…
 Public Site

School Budget Aggregator Commenting

The School District of Philadelphia has released School Budget information for the 2019 Fiscal Year as a collection of PDFs, one for each school. This Python download script (in the form of a Jupyter Notebook) aggregates these budgets and outputs them in a few CSVs.

 Developers

(Un)Incarcerated - A Multimedia Documentary Project on Incarceration and Reentry Commenting

THE PROJECT

We're working with The Reentry Project to create an online, multimedia experience that will challenge people's perception of what someone with a criminal record looks like. This is currently planned through three pieces:

  • An online challenge to identify those with a criminal history from those without, with the expectation that one cannot tell the difference from another.

  • A portrait series of all participants involved.

  • A video series that will provide all participants an opportunity to explain their experiences.

To…

PROJECT ON HOLD - Interpreter Training Commenting

PROJECT ON HOLD

Right now, there is a great need for court interpreter in Philadelphia for languages like Vietnamese and Korean. I want to build an website to help people study for these test. I have the content to study for the English court interpreter test. I would love to chat with someone in education or a designer or UX to figure out how to build this. Feel free to email me at nhu313@gmail.com to chat about this. The website I have built with my teammate is usable, but I think it could be better.

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Combatting Prison Recidivism Commenting

I'm looking for help in creating a call center system for former inmates needing services. Something that would serve as a hotline for resources for people that don't have easy access to computers or cell phones. What I'm envisioning is and 800# for people just released from jail and prison, needing services for anything, from housing and clothing, to job training and food. Specifically focused on people with no other support system in place, such as family or friends. I feel that there's a lot of organizations providing these services and I'd like to make it easier and quicker for people…

School Needs Board Commenting

Let's create a site to help Philly schools ask the community for help. School would be able to ask for things like:

Materials - laptops, cameras, etc Time - one-time or recurring volunteering, with specific skills or not Experiences (like field trips!) Internships/apprenticeships

Basically, something like Donorschoose, but 1) specific to Philly and 2) no money involved - Philly schools aren't allowed to ask for money, so Donorschoose isn't an option.

Check out our GitHub! https://github.com/CfABrigadePhiladelphia/School-Needs-Board

 Developers

PhillyDirections Commenting

PhillyDirections

description

directions with landmarks

what does the project aim to achieve?

Give folks in Philly a easy way to navigate around using public transit, and use landmarks as a point of reference to help them navigate.

What will this application do?

  • User enters start and end point
  • Application returns directions with landmarks via transit, walking or bike

What else might be useful for this application?

  • Ability to save directions
  • Ability to save landmarks
  • Ability to view more information about a landmark
  • Ability for user to submit…
 Developers

Social Hub For Programmers Commenting

I want to create a social hub for programmers to do daily challenges. The objective of this project is to create a website where users can post programming questions and users are allowed to challenge them by answer the programming question. In the end establishing a community of programming elites. Does anyone want to hop onboard?

Births and Deaths Viz Commenting

Working with the data located here:

https://www.opendataphilly.org/dataset/vital-status-events

I'm going to write a C#/.NET program to clean the data, create common formats and master files, and interactive visualizations of the data. Ultimately I'm hoping to deploy it to a web framework.

Affordable Prescription Drug Guide Commenting

A tool to help physicians prescribe less-expensive drugs for patients (#appsforphilly health hackathon, 2015)

At the Code for Philly 2015 #AppsForPhilly Health hackathon, a homeless person wrote, on a board, "It feels like the doctors don't care how expensive the drugs they are prescribing are." They didn't stay, but that expression of frustration inspired a team of doctors & developers to attack that problem.

Doctors often prescribe drugs without a resource to help them understand patient costs. In addition to the economic impact on people, the inhibitive costs creates an…

 Developers

Indego-Flow Commenting

Monitoring Indego bike share to monitor bike arrivals and departures at specific stations.

Could be helpful for determining best way to handle and re-distrbute bike.

 Public Site  Developers

Philly Renewables Dashboard Commenting

The goal is to translate real time solar radiation and wind data into a graphic descriptor of the availability of energy from renewable sources. Users could use the simple interface to decide whether or not to plug in. Need immediate help with data discovery of real-time wind data and historical time series data sets for electricity production from renewables. Private weather stations and solar panels could be a high value data set, but their availability is unknown.

 Developers

Hacker Resource Management Commenting

Hacker Resource Management

The purpose of the Hacker Resource Management project is to come up with a solution to a problem faced by Code for Philly and many other Code for America groups — the difficulty faced by many potential hackers (especially newcomers) in connecting with a project who's need matches their skills.

Currently, the goals are two-fold (1) come up with a method of organizing a committee to address such a need and (2) if necessary, develop any tools that such a committee would need to use.

More about this project will be stated as it becomes determined.

 Developers

One Stop Transparency Shop Commenting

Provide searchable site linking campaign donations and lobbying data to resulting city contracts.

Code for Philly Check-in System Commenting

Code for Philly Check-in System

"Make sure to check in! Seriously, guys!" — Chris Alfano, every meetup

But not everyone does! How do we keep track of how many people attended? How do we monitor how many new people show up a second time? To continue to build a great community, we need to be able to measure our progress.

It's not that people don't want to check-in; they forget to do it, or they can't remember their password, or they get busy. Let's make it easy and automatic!

Ideas

  • When someone connects to the WiFi, automatically route them to the check-in page (like…

Text Alerts for Job Postings Commenting

Many people seeking employment have sparse availability to the internet. Without smartphones or consistent access to the internet, it is very difficult to respond to job postings in a timely manner. This application will ingest relevant job postings from popular websites, filter out only those that indicate they can be contacted by phone, and parse the postings into a 140-character explanation that can include the phone number, hourly wage, address, and title of that posting. People can sign up for certain job searches such as 'warehouse philadelphia', and receive text messages when a new,…

 Developers

Bike Registry Commenting

A free city-wide online bike registry.

See http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/09/29/philadelphia-americas-worst-city-bike-thefts/

Foreign Language Learn Commenting

This is an open-source project to facilitate the learning of foreign languages. The plan is to implement various ways that crowdsourcing can be used to create the contents.

 Developers

phlAddrParse Commenting

First Line Address Parser and Standardizer

Will work on any US based first line address but standardizations are tweaked specifically for Philadelphia addresses.

Does not handle City, State, ZIPCode

GIVEN:

123R-27 north ben Franklin blv apt 2b and s pine av

RETURNS:

O,123,127,123R,127R,N,BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,BLVD„APT 2B,S,PINE,AVE„

WHERE

FIELD EXAMPLE DESCRIPTION
oeb O address number/range, Odd, Even, Both
alow 123 address number low
ahigh 127 address number high
astrlow 123R address number low as a…
 Developers

UNLITTERdelphia Commenting

This project will customize the shareabouts crowd source map architecture created by OpenPlans to become a web tool citizens can use to report instances of illegal household short dumping.

So far three people have contributed - David Siah, Patrick Hammons, and Jon Tehrani.

Next steps include loading a geojson data layer of big belly points into leaflet, and creating a buffer to make it easier for users to drop pins on the map.

 Public Site  Developers

Stormfighter Commenting

Stormfighter is a mapping project designed to optimize the Philadelphia Water Department's efforts in mitigating sewer overflow during rainstorms. The project identifies Water Department-installed stormwater mitigation technologies (such as green roofs, tree trenches, and rain barrels) overlaid on a graduated map of the city's permeable surfaces. This provides data on places where permeability is low, but stormwater mitigation technologies are not installed - in other words, places where flooding is most likely to occur.

 Developers

You Need to Eat This Commenting

A civic project to assist tourists and locals to quickly navigate to quality food experiences.

Parkadelphia (Street Parking in Philadelphia) Commenting

Street Parking Philadelphia

Note: Project in discovery phase.

Street parking dataset for kiosk-metered zones has been requested from Streets department, likely ETA is 2015. Intended scope will cover creating a method to parse/manipulate dataset into usable format for API development, then UI development including a map visualization, searchable zone information such as allowed time period, cost per hour, kiosk locations and residential permit areas. Updates will follow when data is available.

Preliminary Data Points

  • Residential Parking Permit Districts _No set exists…
 Public Site  Developers

Code for Philly Schools Commenting

A meta-project for organizing events and matchmaking to help Philly high-school and college students explore technology through civic projects.

250 Miles Crossing Philadelphia Commenting

Short description of project

'250 Miles Crossing Philadelphia' will be a location based film in Google Earth: a NavDoc (Navigation Documentary) This NavDoc will consist of synchronized sound recordings and GPS tracks.

We aim to produce a film of 25-40 minutes and an interactive on line presentation of the work.

Examples of our approach can be found on: http://www.polakvanbekkum.com/done/routes-and-landscapes/google-earth-animations/

These examples are now presented as vimeo films, but we plan to present the film online as kml/kmz file directly running in Google Earth via…

 Public Site

Actualize.Me Commenting

A Dashboard that facilitates the exploration process of self through project based learning, challenge fulfillment, research based initiatives, and young professional service learning opportunities. - Primarily For High School Students

 Public Site

Reading Pal Commenting

Objective: Design a Web based application, oriented for children, teachers and parents to track the books the kids read, and assess the learning of content and children progress.

Specific Objectives:

  • Provide teachers and parents tools to assess children reading progress.

  • Provide class reading groups, where teachers can scope the discussion of books.

  • Share teacher-created resources for specific books to use in the classroom, to enhance literacy skills, aligned with the curriculum and standards.

  • Motivate children toward reading, by tracking books and progress,…

Map-based data visualizer Commenting

This project originally was going to start by trying to visualize school budget data. However, the budget data did not contain amounts per school, just for broad-based categories. Instead, we chose to develop a map-based visualization project using test score data which did have details at the school level.

Currently, only a Windows 8 app is being written. It would be nice to have a web-based mapping solution as well.

Philadelphia Land Inventory for Urban Agriculture (Vacant and Underutilized Land) Commenting

Vacant Land Inventory Post for Code for Philly

Introduction

The Philadelphia Vacant Land Inventory is an ArcGIS-based mapping tool that will be used to document specific characteristics about vacant and underutilized land lots in Philadelphia. Using a set of databases that already exist on a number of criteria (anything from zoning code to shade cover), the goal is to create an online mapping tool for interested parties to identify plots that are suitable for growing food and plants. This will be Phase I of a two-step process in which we will use the first map to identify plots that…

 Public Site  Developers

StationDown Commenting

Collaborate data on brown outs and fire incidents in Philadelphia. In the future the trip of the browned out station will be calculated and compared to the responding station in order to find out if the response time was affected by the station brown out.

Brown out: "It is when you take an engine or ladder company out of service temporarily and re-distribute the staff for either training or to fill in personnel gaps in other companies." -http://www.phila.gov/fire/pdfs/Brown-Out_FAQ.pdf

 Developers

Small Biz Philly Commenting

I own the domain name www.SmallBizPhilly.com. My goal is to turn this into a social networking website for small business owners in the Philadelphia area. I would like for this to be an online resource similar to this: www.biznik.com. I am a writer but not the type that writes code. I am the journalism/creative writer type and am looking for a techie that knows back-end development with a specialized knowledge of PHP and hand-coding from scratch. If anyone gets involved with my project not only will I give you a stake in my company and a life-time of free advertising on the front-page, but…

 Public Site

Open Access Philly website Commenting

OpenAccessPhilly is a movement of civic-minded, innovative, entrepreneurial types who convene monthly to share projects and passion. Check out our website for more info: www.openaccessphilly.com

OAP Goals

  • Convene those working at the intersection of tech, innovation, entrepreneurship & civic participation
  • Articulate a shared vision
  • Excuse for leaving work early on a Friday

OAP 4 Pillars

  • Free flow of info - open data/open video
  • Participatory urbanism/engagement
  • Access/digital divide
  • Support the regional tech/startup ecosystem

Activity…

 Public Site  Developers

Heatmapping crime around stuff Commenting

Note: this project is heavy on data manipulation and coding.

I set up demo to see if PostGIS could pull crimes that are nearest Septa regional rail stations and heat map them with Leaflet and heatmap.js. It went a little viral indicating a demand for stuff like this:

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Developer-Maps-Crimes-Near-SEPTA-Stops-229590131.html

http://technical.ly/philly/2013/10/23/septa-regional-rail-crime-map/

and trashed by philebrity for having no context what so ever….

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sheltr - connecting people in need to basic needs Commenting

The Problem: In many cities, there is no centralized information repository to serve the immediate needs of the homeless and hungry. In Philadelphia, for example, there are 40 shelters and 4 intake centers, and an unknown number of organizations that provide food – real-time communication between them is minimal to non-existent. As a consequence, there is no easy and accurate way to guide people in need to available shelters and meals.

The Goal: To quickly and accurately guide persons in need to closest available and open food and shelter resources.

The Solution: A…

 Public Site  Developers

Community Magic Commenting

Invitation

We are building a network of community advocates in neighborhoods, community centers and churches. This process will provide personal, one-on-one "real needs" counseling and "match making" of needs to resources to help people find the social supports and material connections needed to make everyday living more productive and less difficult.

This project will encourage key people in every community to LISTEN to their neighbors, use and teach data tools and web sites to RECORD useful information, and help people CONNECT with each other when appropriate.

We are working to…

 Public Site  Developers

PlantSwapr Commenting

The entire city is our free botanic garden!

Use PlantSwapr to offer and find plants to swap with others near you. Post a photo, write a blurb, make a wishlist, check the map, and get swapping!

MVP below: 1. Swaprs login with Facebook or email. 2. Swaprs create profile, inputting their nearby cross street for semi-anonymous mapping. 3. Swaprs post offers of their surplus plants, seeds, bulbs, scion wood & rootstock. 4. Swaprs search others' listings for specific plants. 5. Swaprs browse a map of offers from gardeners nearby. 6. Swaprs use private messages to inquire and set…

 Developers

Penndot Traffic Camera API Commenting

Penndot-Traffic-Cameras-API

Get Cameras By roadid

  • Endpoint: /getCamerasByRoadId.php
  • Parameters: roadid - One of (i476,i676,i76,i95,nonhighway), format - (xml or json)

Get Cameras By Lat Lng

  • Endpoint: /getCamerasByLatLng.php
  • Parameters: lat - Latitude, lng - Longitude, radius - (in miles, default 10mi), count - (default 20) format - (xml or json)

Get All Cameras

  • Endpoint: /getAllCameras.php
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OpenPhillyGlobe Commenting

"Google Earth for Philadelphia" with open source and open transit data.

Live demo: http://www.openphillyglobe.org/

Interactively visualize SEPTA routes and pedestrian counts. Middle-mouse button drag to tilt the view. More transit layers to come in the future.

Real-Time SEPTA locations and average weekday pedestrian activity at Philadelphia street corners in August 2013.

There is a…

 Public Site  Developers

Enter/Return Commenting

Original Idea: http://studiocns.org/enterreturn/

To see the underlying resource data, look at the networkofcare_lat_lng.csv within the /data folder.

 Developers

Public School Accessibility Commenting

How long does it take to walk or take public transit to the nearest public school throughout the city? How has that changed, city-wide, after the recent public school closings?

Let's build an interactive map that visualizes travel time to the closest public school — with options to show the map with the data from before the closing, after the closing, or allow the user to build their own map by interactively closing or opening existing schools.

This will both demonstrate how open data can be used to generate a basic "accessibility" analysis and demonstrate one of the uses of the new…

 Public Site  Developers

Clean Air Council's Open Climate Tracker Commenting

The Clean Air Council's Open Climate Tracker is an open-hardware, mobile sensor platform that is designed to gather data over large areas and connect that data to the internet through its built-in mobile mesh network. The goal of the project is to gather city-wide data pertaining to Climate Change and pollution and combine that data with with open databases such as OpenTreeMaps to quantify the effects of tree cover in the city over time. This will allow researchers to quantify the real economic and environmental value to each tree planted. The data will also be opened up to developers who…

 Public Site  Developers

myPhillyRising Commenting

myPhillyRising

A mobile web app by OpenPlans to support the outreach work of the PhillyRising collaborative. PhillyRising targets neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia that are plagued by chronic crime and quality of life concerns, and establishes partnerships with community members to address these issues. The PhillyRising Team coordinates the actions of City agencies to help neighbors realize their vision for their community through sustainable, responsive, and cost-effective solutions. Read more at…

 Public Site  Developers

Hacking the Hackers : Understanding Hacking Dynamics Commenting

Hello PHL Hackers:

We are working to see how innovations are created and spread through hackathon competitions. We're curious to know how designers and developers can produce software/websites given the time restriction, with the focus on technological enablers such as gits and APIs.

We're looking for some hackers to help us understand these innovation dynamics.

Here's the link to the website for potential interview subjects & a mini-survey.

Hackers and Civic Innovators Invited! - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HydauEeMzWMvFqKUPmrqqKKr4RCB8ght1aZqwkHTNbI/edit

We'd…

 Public Site  Developers

New social media app to make it easier for people to succeed Commenting

We're creating a new social media app (native and web) to make it easier for anyone to show off their talent and succeed in life. If you're interested hit me up @ kevin@vuid.co (don't judge our website, it's slow and intentionally stealthy right now - but we think you'll like the app - or maybe not).

We have a cool small team in center city Phila and are looking for a few more cool people to join up. Ambitious, cool, hardworking, easy going, are some of the most important things, and other helpful stuff is:

iOS Developer Opening(s): Skills that are required: - Experience…

Summer Hackathon for HS Students (WebSLAM) Commenting

There is a huge opportunity to provide an awesome summer program for high school students through a grant with the Digital Media and Learning competition. I have a dream of pulling more HS students into the Code for Philly brigade with the idea of even building a student brigade chapter.

If anyone is interested in supporting some summer programming with HS students, the grant is due on June 10th. My thought is to run a hackathon with HS students who attend Code for Philly meetups over the summer, but maybe you have a better idea?

More info on the grant here:…

 Public Site

Know Me Commenting

App for keeping nurses on the same page about their nursing home patients. Won third place in Startup Weekend Health 2013. Current under development. https://twitter.com/KnowMeHealth

 Public Site  Developers

Philly Phlash App Commenting

Philly Phlash App is a mobile app for the Philly Phlash trolley. Phlash is the trolley services managed by Independence Visitor Center (http://www.phlvisitorcenter.com/) that runs between May - October. Phlash is a tourism trolley that covers all Philadelphia vacation spots from the Independence Hall to Philly Zoo. This app is the extension septa.mobi project. A must have mobile app for Philly people: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/09/19/28-mobile-apps-philadelphian-iphone-android/

 Public Site  Developers

Nightlife Mobile Commenting

Note: May 28th, 2013 - Deleted Developer URL since it gave Error404 message.

App Image: Carpe Noctem (Picture of a Wolf Howling at the Moon)

Goal: Make it the Yelp.com for Parties and Events within Philadelphia, PA.

Google Maps: Google Maps can be used to pin point the parties by the day that they occur. There should be a filter on the map that allows you to show only the day, the week, or the whole month, and filter via neighborhood.

Nightlife is a mobile app and web app for partying in Philadelphia, PA.

Ideas for Night Life Website: -Businesses in Philadelphia create a…

PhillyBudget Commenting

PhillyBudget

Data Set

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/data?docid=1q0fWW4CfN17d1ilkpoLyzZBAR7oshoK0EHOS4MU

Git Hub Repository for Generating Data

https://github.com/bengarvey/budget

Team Members

Ajmal Ahmady Lloyd Emelle

NextStop Commenting

A way for Philadelphians to discover stops/stop times close to their location, and to keep tabs on their favorite routes/stops. First on iOS, then perhaps on Droid. Then.. Windows Phone.

DevOps for Normals Commenting

A collection of documents, tools and articles on how to create and manage single purpose servers.

Cite Club Commenting

Cite Club

Cite Club is an attempt to incentivize and streamline the process of fixing [citation needed] tags on Wikipedia entries.

It works by streamlining the process of finding facts that require citations and generating the proper code/markup to cite those facts.

The basic steps are as follows:

  1. The user clicks on a big, shiny, inviting button

  2. The app searches Wikipedia for a citation needed tag in a Wikipedia article

  3. The user is presented with the specific sentence that has the citation needed tag (along with other text above and below it, intending to…