Harvest Initiative

Inspiration

Hunger is a real problem for American communities and food banks traditionally have trouble keeping fresh produce in their pantries. This should be easy to solve considering that food grows almost anywhere with a little care.

What it does

This would be a volunteer organization system operating as a social network. The site would contain an organization dashboard for managers that work directly for the organization to coordinate operations between Host home owners, Volunteers, and Master Gardeners. This structure would place some form of food production on the host's land. The produce generated would be distributed as follows -percentage to the Host -percentage for Volunteers to purchase at a discount. -a majority percentage would be distributed through local food banks.

How we built it

We analyzed the economic impact of the need for clean food and designed a non-profit business model to make the organization self sustaining. Leveraging formats utilized by popular social media platforms, we mocked-up a home page, a semi functional registration page, and a presentation for the idea. pitched through Prezi link

Challenges we ran into

Challenges included: -Coming up with a way to make the organization self sustaining instead of relying solely on donors. -Figuring out different methods to enhance volunteer and community engagement through gamification and availability of the final product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

-Collaborating on a viable business model that has the potential to truly effect change in the fight against hunger. -Focused dedication to a viable engine for change.

What we learned

-Several in the group learned how to use new software. -The importance of interdisciplinary skill sets when creating a startup. -Viable business models are very involved.