Inspiration
I call Champaign Urbana my home. I transferred from a small technical college to this great university with studies of all kind, people of all walks. I saw CS students lining up for resume and free pizza; I saw floods of people walking on the main lawn, in cornfield festival, on Green Street. Among the busy crowd, I observed the invisible members of our society. I met a student with a low wage job and struggled to pay rent. I heard countless heartbroken stories about people who suffer from chronic disease, who have two hungry kids, who struggle to put food on the plate. Champaign Urbana is my home. We, as a society agreed to help the unfortunate, to give them the fundamental human right of owning a happy life. We believe that there exists a system to provide food without being pitied; we agree that feeding the unfortunate is a starting point for solving the systemic problems:
- their pains
- their surroundings
- their addictions
- their education
- their hope and dignity
What it does
So this is our solution. OneMoreMeal is a community-based effort for eliminating poverty. In the short term, we would partner with local restaurants to resolve hunger through an ecosystem of crowdfunding; In the long term, we would provide insights to local social work agencies to help address the poverty and other problems associated with it, like crime and opioids. To solve the hunger crisis, we borrowed a proven system from our home in China. It is not well known, but McDonald's are a social institution for the poorest people in Hong Kong and many other Chinese Cities. They are 24hr; they offer the cheapest food; they have comfortable space, and they often won't kick you out because you are homeless. The poorest citizens from the most expensive city work all day, come into a local McDonald's late-night when not a lot of customers is around, and buy a cheap burger, stay up all night. The community, the local citizens, started to buy one extra burger and reserve them for the homeless who could afford. The domestic social workers and government agencies saw that and formalize it into a system. Now in Hong Kong, when you purchase a Big Mac, you have the option to buy one for a homeless. Comparing the differences between Hong Kong and Champaign Urbana shares the average of one out of five percent of people under the poverty line. We decided to implement, digitize, and localize the solution. We designed a system where restaurants could report extra meals, and the people in need could consume it with an IC card. Control is our design goal. For local social work agencies, the OneMoreMeal service is provided and managed by the regional offices. We want people who are in the food stamp system to be in OneMoreMeal. We also don't want people to exploit the system. For restaurants, we would like them to have control and balance on their income so that they wouldn't be burdened by it. A kind person spends extra dollars on an extra burger in a location. The burger is reserved for the homeless in that location. We don't want the restaurant owners to change a lot on anything: their payment system, their interior, their training. All they need to do is to report on an extra purchase is the best solution.
Hunger is the short term solution for helping the undertenant. We believe by supporting research on the hardest problem: drug overuse, alcoholic, illiteracy, illness, unemployment, unjust... If every unfortunate in the town is on OneMoreMeal, every purchase creates valuable data for local social work authorities, research institutions, and government agencies.
How we built it
We start with a brainstorm on how to solve the problem with poverty. We recalled the news and existing solutions in HK. We analysis its feasibility to have a similar system in Champaign Urbanna while finding it able to deploy in the city. We thought more about the reason on what causes poverty, while this is also the problem government and researchers concerned, we decide to help to provide data for them to do analysis. To accomplish the two goals, we decided to build a website which is a platform that can give the sponsor to join and help the unfortunates, also a platform for government to give out surveys to collect data they need. We separated the team into 2 groups, frontend, and backend. On the frontend, we use Javascript to build the website and data visualizations. On the backend, we use PHP as our developing language, finishing the function of uploading survey, creating accounts for different types of users and dealing with consuming records.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We successfully build a prototype of the website in only 20 hours. Providing a complete and well-oriented solution for the problem that exists for over dozens of years. Here're the GitHub links:
https://github.com/zimo-xiao/PYGHack-frontend
https://github.com/zimo-xiao/PYGHack-backend
What we learned
When meet a problem, we should not only focus on the problem itself, we should think more about the reason why it's a problem. And when solving the problem, concerning different views, will make the solution be more perfect and easier to be accepted by people. Taking multi-dimensions into consideration may have made the problem more difficult than straightly solve it, however, a solution provided under this kind of situation can really solve the problem in the real world.
What's next for OneMoreMeal
We will connect with different restaurants to join this program and provide convenience for helping the unfortunates getting food and governments collecting data from the survey. In the meantime, integrate with the food stamp system to announce the program the those who need it and contract with different institutions to see whether they can help in providing analysis of the data and help to provide the possible solutions for the current situation, and long term plan to reduce the poverty fundamentally. Also, we will utilize IoT technology to collect data in a humane way, like using survey receipt printers and provide data-secured ID card for the properties to use them just like the normal people use credit cards when in sponsors' restaurants.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.