Inspiration
I've been volunteering at a Food Pantry for a few years now. One issue that I commonly seen was teachers from preschools and daycares coming to our food pantry to get resources for their students. However, our pantry policies did not allow them to receive donations because they were apart of institutions and not getting food for their own family. That inspired me to make this application where those teachers can request donations from other community members who are willing to help.
What it does
LunchLink connects community members willing to donate food to preschools or daycares who lack the funding to provide lunch meals to their students. A user can easily search for institutions nearby and get a list of requested items. The application provides the contact information for the mangers of the preschool or daycares so that the donator can connect with the managers and provide their donations.
How we built it
The application was built on flask and html5/css3 so it can be accessible from any device for any user.
Challenges we ran into
Some challenges we ran into were based on some feedback from our friends who mentioned how allergies or dietary restrictions may be addressed as well as money donations. That's when we pivoted our application to be a bridge for contact and not manage the donations and let the preschool and daycare managers talk with the donators to allocate the resources effectively.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I was able to complete the project within a 24 hour timeline and pitch my idea to some of the other volunteers at my food pantry. They really liked my idea and said it was thoughtful and effective enough to implement for our local daycares!
What's next for LunchLink: Every kid gets to eat
As mentioned, we created the application on flask, html5, and css3. Some next steps would be to make the application a mobile app to ensure the user experience is easy to understand and use on mobile phones which is expected to be the most used device for our platform.
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