NYC Free Meals Calendar

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  Live Feed view - Suggests free hot meals closest to user

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  Month view - For planning ahead

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  Week view - Easy to plan out daily/weekly schedule

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  Map view - For user to look around and find locations across NYC

Inspiration

In our day-to-day lives we often use a daily events calendar to help look for interesting events to help fill our weekends. At the same time, we often see everywhere we go (the street, the subways, etc) people who are hungry and in need of a free hot meal. So we took what we used for ourselves and applied it to help solve this problem.

What it does

The app provides quick information to the user that would help them identify the closest free hot meal provider.

How we built it

Google AI Studio.

Sourcing data from: City Harvest Food Map: cityharvest.org/food-map — Official directory tracking emergency food programs, soup kitchens, and mobile meal distributions across the five boroughs. NYC FoodHelp Finder: NYC FoodHelp Finder Map — Official City of New York interactive locator for food assistance and hot meal programs. WhyHunger Find Food Network: WhyHunger Network Database — National and local hunger relief database connecting individuals with community food pantries and hot meal sites.

Challenges we ran into

Data - There already exists websites that list soup kitchens, but there is no single source of data that contains all the info we need. Design - We ran into challenges in figuring out how to make the page usable while also containing all the needed details

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to create a page containing the information and visualization that we desired.

What we learned

• How to use Google AI Studio to vibe code a fully feature rich web page
• Design a page to make it "pop" and working with AI to make it more human friendly

What's next for NYC Free Meals Calendar

• Add other data sources
• Enhance usability, perhaps add a suggestion

Built With

• ai
• google