When American University junior Ryann Ashley flew across the country from her college campus in Northwest Washington back to her home in Los Angeles, she felt like the world around her was falling apart.

The coronavirus had just shut down American , and she was now returning to California, the state that currently has the third-most confirmed positive cases in the U.S. and was under a shelter-in-place order. (Disclosure: American University holds the license to DCist’s parent company, WAMU.)

“I just really felt very helpless watching everything happen,” says Ashley, a political communication major.

So she used her now-free time to start compiling links to local resources regarding financial assistance and unemployment into a Google Doc. She made the document editable and tweeted it out, urging others to add any other helpful information. People from around the country began responding to her tweet, asking her to track down different services, or providing her with links to different response programs.

Within a little over a week, that Google Doc has now transformed into a free collaborative app that connects users to over 300 different coronavirus-response websites and organizations across the country, ranging from a list of banks offering relief to customers, to a “guide for the newly unemployed,” to a bartender emergency assistance program.

“I think there’s so much about this horrible new world we’re living in that encourages throwing in the towel and feeling helpless,” Ashley says. “Working on this with friends and strangers around the world has felt like a refusal to be stagnant.”

The app itself was developed by Charles Reed, a data scientist working in the computer software industry, after he stumbled upon Ashley’s tweet promoting her Google Doc. He reached out to her over Twitter on Tuesday, and that afternoon, the two tossed around ideas about expanding the Google Doc into a mobile app. By Tuesday evening, he had launched the app using a free software-development platform.

“I didn’t know who she was prior to this,” says Reed, who is based in Alabama. “It’s just two community-minded people coming together to try to help make sense of this unprecedented time we have in history here, and try to do some good.”

Reed was struck by the scope of Ashley’s initial document, which was growing daily with submissions from people across the nation, and says that he saw a unique opportunity to collaborate on a tool that he didn’t believe existed on the internet.

“I had not seen anything like what she did,” Reed says. “I see articles that news organizations have written, and I think those are great, but I had not seen any collated, single-entry point for this kind of data. I saw all of the care that was put into it to find very helpful information, and it’s not just generic information—it’s very targeted for certain things.”

The app, which can be downloaded directly to a cellphone through a website, categorizes her comprehensive resource list into 21 different topic areas, including physical and mental health, meal support, and legal assistance. There’s a “feeling sick” button, that brings users to the Centers for Disease Control’s coronavirus self-checker, and a “what’s new” section, highlighting recent news articles and updates from the U.S. government.

Ashley says that what began as a local project to occupy her time in isolation has showed her just how many aspects of daily life will be affected by the pandemic, and how many individual’s lives will be upended. In response to her Google Doc, she says she received several emails specifically asking for help in tracking down domestic violence resources, a fallout of the shutdowns and stay-at-home orders that she hadn’t previously considered.

“I think we forget there’s so much privilege to stay at home during this,” Ashley says. “Right now, I think people are thinking of home as a safe place, and not really thinking about the who people have danger in their own homes.”

Both Ashley and Reed are collaborating daily to update the app with more information and links, and have included a submission form for users to request help in a certain topic area. The duo’s latest development is a “virtual pen pal” feature, where users can submit a form including their hobbies and interests, and the app will match them with someone to correspond with during self-isolation.

“The idea is to make community in this time of social distancing,” Ashley says. “There’s so much opportunity for an unprecedented digital community throughout all of this.”

The team plans to continue working together until they no longer see a need for their resource, and Ashley and Reed don’t foresee ending the project any time soon. Since its inception, the project has received support on Twitter from journalists, television producers, and advocacy organizations, all urging their followers to consult the resources and add their own.

I think the most comforting part of all of this was the agency it’s allowed me and other people to take back,” Ashley says. “I feel like this app is maybe connected to that idea of a way to feel safe and have control during a time when we really might not have either of those.”