Qwani Connect, the Nairobi's Young Creatives Community Hub

This is a submission for the DEV Weekend Challenge: Community

The Community

Qwani is a youth-led creative community based in Nairobi, Kenya. What started as a platform for young writers to get published has grown into a home for artists, musicians, film-makers, illustrators, poets, and anyone who creates.

Every month, Qwani hosts events that bring people together in ways that are hard to find anywhere else in the city:

• Hikes "positive suffering," as the community calls it. Last Saturday of every month.
• Sketch Tours along Nairobi, walk, learn the history of iconic buildings like Kipande House and McMillan Library, and sketch the city around you.
• Poetry & Letter Reading Sessions at the American Corner on Moi Avenue, submit a poem or an unconventional letter, and the group reads and openly critiques it together.
• Trivia Nights — board games, Kahoot, and team quizzes. Think you know all 55 African capitals?

• Open Mics — poets, musicians, and spoken-word artists get a stage.
• Karaoke & Crafts — sing Sauti Sol with your friends while others learn bead-making and crochet.
• Picnics at the Arboretum, Cycling Tours through Karura Forest, and Book Discussions with author panels.

I'm part of this community, and I built Qwani Connect for them.

What I Built

Qwani Connect is a community platform that solves three real problems I noticed:

1. Event Discovery & RSVP

Qwani's events are currently scattered across Instagram stories, WhatsApp groups, and word of mouth. Qwani Connect puts every event in one place with RSVP functionality and a real-time "Who's Going" feature, you can see avatar initials of people who've RSVP'd, creating social proof and FOMO before you even commit.

2. The Wall — A Live Poetry & Writing Feed

Currently, members submit poems and letters via email before reading sessions. Qwani Connect replaces that with The Wall a live masonry-layout feed where submitted poems, letters, and stories appear instantly for the whole community to read and heart.

The Wall uses Supabase Realtime — when someone submits a new piece, it appears for everyone without a page refresh. The feed is multilingual, just like the community English, Swahili, and Sheng all live side by side.

3. The Suffering Streak

Qwani's monthly hikes are legendary. The community bonds through what they call "positive suffering." I turned this inside joke into a feature: The Suffering Streak tracks your consecutive monthly hike attendance with a leaderboard.

Miss a month? Your streak resets. The fire emojis scale with your commitment — 🔥 for beginners, 🔥🔥 for regulars, 🔥🔥🔥 for the truly committed. It's gamification that only makes sense if you know this community, and that's exactly the point.

Demo

Check out the Live Demo

Code

[GitHub Repo for Qwani Connect]{https://github.com/lewisawe/qwani-connect}

How I Built It

Tech Stack

Layer	Choice	Why
Framework	Next.js 16 (App Router)	Server components for fast initial load, API routes for backend logic
Database	Supabase (Postgres + Realtime)	Realtime subscriptions for The Wall and Who's Going, Row Level Security, instant setup
Icons	Lucide React	Clean, consistent iconography
Deployment	AWS Amplify	Hosting with CI/CD from GitHub

Database Design

Four tables with Row Level Security:

events      → id, title, description, date, location, category, rsvp_count
rsvps       → id, event_id, name, email (unique per event+email)
submissions → id, author_name, title, content, type (poem|letter|story)
streaks     → id, email, name, hike_count, current_streak, last_hike_month

A Postgres trigger auto-increments rsvp_count when a new RSVP is inserted. The streak API calculates month-over-month continuity server-side to prevent gaming.

Realtime Features

Two features use Supabase Realtime subscriptions:

1. The Wall subscribes to INSERT events on submissions — new poems appear instantly for all viewers
2. Who's Going subscribes to INSERT events on rsvps filtered by event_id — new RSVPs show up live on event cards

What Makes This Different

The Suffering Streak is technically just a counter with date logic, but it resonates because it's built on an inside joke. The Wall is a living space where Sheng poems sit next to Swahili letters sit next to English stories, exactly like a real Qwani session.