Feeding Families

💡 Inspiration 💡

Food waste was the inspiration behind the Feeding Families social media website. Toronto is the largest and most diverse city in Canada with 2.7 million residents calling the city home. Unfortunately, vast quantities of food are wasted each year in the city. “In Canada, $31 billion worth of food is wasted annually. Ontarians alone generated nearly 3.6 million tonnes of food and organic waste.” - Government of Ontario

⚙️ What it does ⚙️

Feeding Families is a social media website that allows businesses to donate to charities as seamlessly as possible. Simply register an account as either a business that would like to donate food or a charity that is accepting. Now you can view the local activity in your area about businesses that are giving away food, or charities that are looking to accept food.

🛠️ How we built it 🛠️

Frontend

The frontend refers to the part of the application that is seen by the end user. For this aspect of the project, the design was extremely important.

Backend

The backend is the part of the application that handles processing and is not seen by the end user. For this Flask, a python based framework, and firebase REST-based API to create and communicate databases.

😣 Challenges we ran into 😣

The biggest issue we had with this project was verifying the user's register and the limited time constraint of 24 hours. Originally the project was intended to be done with React. However, it had to be transferred over to Flask due to complications.

😊 Accomplishments that we're proud of 😊

We're proud of the concept we presented because it provides a practical and virtuous value to an issue that plagues our society. Even though we were not able to implement all the functionalities, we hope this sparks discussion and action towards creating a better product or service that is able to alleviate food wastage.

📚 What we learned 📚

We attempted to learn React, however we ended up learning cloud computing using Firebase with cloud functions using REST-based API's to store user data. This was challenging since this was our first time with databases. More importantly, we learned a lot about the food wastage that happens in Toronto and around the world.

🌎 What's next for Feeding Families 🌎

What's next for Feeding Families is creating a full functioning website, and mainstream exposure to the public and organizations to support the cause and limit food wastage. This will be beneficial both economically and socially to everyone.