Hearth

Web interface for creating a food listing

Inspiration

There are thousands of youth with access to SMS who need food and or a place to stay. Tons of perfectly good food is wasted every day after restaurants, stores and bakeries close. We shouldn't have to wait for drastic legislative changes to fix this: https://www.change.org/p/parliament-end-food-waste-in-canada

What it does

On one side, Hearth provides an SMS service for those who need food or a place to stay, and sends directions to nearest food or shelter resource without needing data/wifi. On the other side, it provides an easy way for restaurants/stores/bakeries to share extra food at the end of the day that would otherwise be wasted.

How I built it

Hearth is completely serverless and uses stdlib with hosted MongoDB for persistent storage. Uses our own google maps stdlib function to get directions, location matrixes to find which resources are closest.

Challenges I ran into

French parentheses

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Stateful SMS interactions using stateless architecture. Figuring out the Google maps API Making public stdlib modules

What I learned

French parentheses do not exist.

What's next for Hearth

Phone verification to ensure the individual aspect of providing food to those in need is not abused or taken advantage of. A quick digit verification can ensure that people who want to assist the cause are serious.

Subscriptions to SMS notifications for when new listings are posted nearby

Partner with nonprofits to reward businesses that donate their extra food

Expansion to other Canadian cities