Wag & Company
Wag & Company is an award-winning charity based in the North east, that aims to end loneliness for older people through offering regular visits from friendly dogs. It is the only charity befriending older dog lovers in their own homes as well as in care or hospitals.
The Brief
With over 400 volunteers providing visits to thousands of older people across the North East, Wag & Company wanted a digital solution to improve their processes and back end systems, so they could securely keep records, match visiting dogs to older dog lovers and also monitor the impact they have.
The Solution
We worked closely with the charity’s leadership team, trustees, operational staff, and collaborated with their design and marketing specialists to develop a modern and secure web-based system which tackles a number of key issues.
We created specific features to develop the solution including:
The more technical details include:
- Web platform was built in Django Framework, using the Python language
- Web front-end interface was built using Django Templates, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript
- Heavy use of Google Maps and Google Geocoding API, and of publicly available postcode data via Postcodes.io API, and Office for National Statistics datasets
- Made use of the Postgresql SQL database, with PostGIS for geo mapping features
- Hosted on Amazon Web Services using the high-availability Elastic Beanstalk deployment technology for scalability and reliability
- Integration with WordPress via a REST API
- Task management via Celery
- PDF generation via JavaScript
- CSV report generation via Python
- Big data reporting via Metabase
- Caching of data via Redis NoSQL datastore
- External security testing performed through a PEN test to ensure integrity and security of infrastructure.
In 2019 we received a transformational grant from The National Lottery's Digital and Reaching Communities funds to equip us with the right digital systems... A big part of the project was the Wag engine room... in short it allows us to do what do best, at the scale that we need to do it, now and into the future, efficiently, safely and professionally and of course with lots of heart.