This summer, I interned with OregonASK to design and develop a web-app named INSIGHT that allows afterschool organizations to easily self-assess their organization based on OregonASK’s 2025 updated Standards and Competencies, view their results in multiple formats based on the Standards’ rubric, and receive recommendations as to how to improve in areas in which their lower score showed that they had room for growth.
About the internship
Context
OregonASK is an afterschool network that provides training and resources to improve the quality of afterschool programming and ensure all children have access to accessible, high-quality programming in Oregon. Most states’ afterschool networks have created a set of standards that they want their state’s afterschool organizations to abide by. OregonASK created updated versions of their Standards and Competencies during the first half of 2025, and that is what the self-assessment is based on.
Though most states have some form of afterschool standards, none of them have an app or website that organizations could use to self-assess. Previously, the primary method of viewing results and recommendations was through forms or documents, both of which do not visualize the results or provide recommendations. This limitation makes it hard for many organizations to take action to improve areas in which they showed room for growth, as the self-assessments didn’t mean much to them. So, OregonASK hired me to create INSIGHT, the first program of its kind.
The Challenge
My Solution
I created INSIGHT to make self-assessment easy, show results in multiple ways to minimize technical and mathematical knowledge required to understand them, and give actionable recommendations to allow organizations to do something with their results. I used Streamlit, a Python library, and integrated CSS and HTML, to make a responsive web-app that was ideal for data visualization. For each of the six elements of OregonASK’s 2025 Standards, users can fill out an embedded Google Form (created to be familiar to those used to the Google Suite), and view their results in both written and graphic format, with an explanation of the indicator or standard the result is for. Program administrators have a higher level of access that allows them to view recommendations for their organization and the results from all of their program’s staff members. We also completed multiple rounds of user testing to improve the web-app’s ease of use.
Working with build4good and OregonASK was an amazing experience. The intern cohort, build4good staff, and OregonASK team were supportive, enthusiastic, kind, and caring to each other and to me. Learning and using Streamlit taught me a lot about being flexible and coming up with creative and unique solutions. I had dreamed of working with a nonprofit for years, and getting to work with OregonASK reinforced my belief that I want to spend my life coding for social good. I believe the skills I learned from my build4good tech advisors, the other build4good interns, the OregonASK team, and my own work for OregonASK will help me in my future ventures.
Reflection
Some of the best experiences build4good provided me this summer, outside of the fulfilling and inspiring work I got to do, was the Washington, D.C. convening and hackathon. It was amazing to meet my cohort and mentors in person, become closer with my fellow interns, do fun activities, eat great food, and learn so much useful and important information from a wide variety of accomplished speakers and workshops. In addition, I appreciated our weekly cohort meetings, which also often brought in speakers, as they taught me new skills and ideas. I’m so grateful to build4good and OregonASK for giving me this extraordinary opportunity.