Aakha.org
AI-Powered Child Sponsorship Platform — Live at aakha.org
About the Project
Aakha.org is a live child sponsorship platform that connects sponsors, NGOs, and children through an AI-powered matching system. The platform replaces a fragmented, manual, and opaque sponsorship process with a transparent, data-driven ecosystem — where the right sponsor finds the right child, NGOs manage operations efficiently, and every stakeholder has a purpose-built interface.
The Challenge
Traditional child sponsorship programs are broken in three ways: sponsors have no reliable way to find children who match their values and preferences, NGOs are buried in manual administrative work, and children and sponsors rarely maintain meaningful long-term relationships. The lack of transparency — in fund allocation, progress tracking, and communication — erodes trust on all sides.
The Solution
Aakha.org solves this with a four-role platform (Sponsors, Children, NGOs, Admins) built around an AI matching engine at its core. The AI algorithm scores sponsor-child compatibility across six weighted factors: geographic proximity, age preference, education focus areas, shared interests, language compatibility, and sponsorship history. Each role gets a tailored dashboard — sponsors see AI-ranked match cards with compatibility scores, NGOs manage child profiles and approve sponsorship requests through a structured workflow, children track progress milestones, and admins oversee the full ecosystem. A moderated real-time messaging system keeps all communication safe and accountable.
Impact & Results
- Built and deployed the AI matching algorithm as Backend & AI Lead — multi-factor weighted scoring across 6 dimensions with adaptive learning from user interactions and fallback handling for edge cases.
- Designed a normalized PostgreSQL schema with 14+ tables covering users, child profiles, NGO profiles, sponsorships, messages, and donation records — architected for data integrity and query performance at scale.
- Engineered the full REST API surface: 30+ endpoints covering auth, child management, sponsorship workflows, messaging, and the AI matching service — with JWT security, bcrypt hashing, rate limiting, and CORS.
- Deployed as a live platform at aakha.org — taken from capstone project to production, serving real NGOs and sponsors.