Human Essentials

Abstract

1. Introduction

Human Essentials is an inventory management system built to address the needs of Diaper Banks as directly and explicitly as possible and adapted to meet the needs of other Essentials Banks. Essentials Banks maintain inventory, receive donations and other human essentials supplies (e.g. diapers, period supplies), and issue distributions to community partner organizations. Like any non-profit, they also need to perform reports on this data and have day-to-day operational information they need. This application aims to serve those needs and facilitate the general operations of the Diaper Banks (e.g., using barcode readers, scale weighing, inventory audits).

Human Essentials is a free hosted service! There is no cost to Essentials banks, and all of the source code (MIT Licensed) is shared and built by volunteers as part of Ruby for Good. You can find out more about Ruby for Good at rubyforgood.org.

Human Essentials has over 200 registered banks across the United States at no cost to them. It is currently helping over 3 million children receive diapers and over 400k period supply recipients receive period supplies. Our team is in partnership with the National Diaper Bank Network (NDBN) and can be found in their annual conference that brings numerous non-profit organizations that distribute essential products to people.

2. Objective

Human Essentials is an inventory management system for diaper, incontinence, and period-supply banks. It supports them in distributing to partners, tracking inventory, and reporting stats and analytics.

This project demonstrates how Ruby can be applied to a real-world Full Stack Web Development problem.

4. Technology Stack

5. System Requirements

General requirements for this technology stack — check the README for exact versions.

• Ruby and Bundler
• Git (to clone the repository)

6. Installation & Setup

git clone https://github.com/rubyforgood/human-essentials.git
cd human-essentials

Full setup instructions are in the project README.

7. Future Enhancements

Suggested extensions you can add to make this your own project.

• Add role-based access control
• Deploy on a VPS or cPanel hosting with a custom domain
• Add automated tests and a CI pipeline

8. Viva / Review Questions

Common questions examiners ask for projects in this domain.

1. Explain the frontend, backend and database layers of this application.
2. How is user authentication and authorisation implemented?
3. Describe the main database tables / collections and their relationships.
4. Which REST APIs or routes are exposed and what do they return?
5. How would you deploy this application to production?

9. Source Code & License

This project is developed by rubyforgood and published on GitHub under the MIT License. Please follow the license terms and credit the original author when you use or modify this code.