Reduce Food Waste & Feed the Hungry
Donation protected
In Edmonton, every week, thousands of dollars worth of perishable foods, like fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy rots in garbage. At the same time, one of every five children in Edmonton lives in poverty.
Currently, there are very limited ways to release this food from grocery stores, farms, restaurants, and to bring it to the community kitchens, hot lunch programs, and agencies across the city — to the thousands of children and families whose lives it could transform.
Why? It’s complicated.
There are financial reasons, regulatory reasons, legal reasons. Transportation is tricky. No one wants to waste food, but change is hard. We want to launch the Our Servings app to take this complication away. Our app platform will make it easy and economical for donors and suppliers to give and for agencies to accept, all with the click of a button.
But wait, who are we?
We're a two-woman group that's ardently trying to reduce food waste in our city of Edmonton - we go by Our Servings.
I am Mursal Khedri (B.A. Psychology), and my partner is Ria Rana (BSc. Neuroscience). We are both proud University of Alberta alumnae.
The concept of the app began as a group project for a class Ria and I were taking at the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta. We spoke to dozens of people across various sectors --from farmers to charities to regulatory bodies. Everyone responded positively and enthusiastically to the notion of a unifying platform that can bridge the logistical gap that currently exists within Edmonton. Watch our group's vodcast to get a snapshot of food waste and insecurity in the city.
Our Solution
Through our community research, we identified that currently there are many communication gaps between surplus food donors and charities. They simply do not have the means to talk to each other. That's exactly what our app is going to do --it will be a platform for charities to post what they need for donations, and for donors to fulfill these demands. But that's not all.
Our vision is healthy equity for all.
Our mission is to find creative and innvotive ways to provide under-advantaged and food insecure populations with wholesome, nutritious servings.
Our initiative specifically focuses on perishables, like fruits and vegetables, and logistics prove to be quite challenging because of the short shelf-life of these foods. Our app will speed up the process of identifying supply and demand using real-time technology. We can save thousands of pounds of perfectly edible, nutritious food that our charities are in dire need of.
We have created a prototype in the form of a web app. We are currently developing a fully-functional version for iOS/Android and desktop that will be available for free public download.
If you are passionate about addressing food waste and insecurity in Edmonton, we need your help to cover the costs of engineering, design (UX/UI), and app testing.
We invite everyone in the community to be a part of our vision — to reduce food waste, and feed our neighbours.
In the meantime, we are working hard to raise awareness and get community support: https://edmontonfoodcouncil.org/tag/our-servings/
http://www.metronews.ca/news/edmonton/2017/07/10/sustainability-is-on-the-menu-at-fresh-meaet.html
https://www.facebook.com/uofapllc/photos/a.1007025722698551.1073741827.1006423362758787/1469474476453671/?type=3&theater
Currently, there are very limited ways to release this food from grocery stores, farms, restaurants, and to bring it to the community kitchens, hot lunch programs, and agencies across the city — to the thousands of children and families whose lives it could transform.
Why? It’s complicated.
There are financial reasons, regulatory reasons, legal reasons. Transportation is tricky. No one wants to waste food, but change is hard. We want to launch the Our Servings app to take this complication away. Our app platform will make it easy and economical for donors and suppliers to give and for agencies to accept, all with the click of a button.
But wait, who are we?
We're a two-woman group that's ardently trying to reduce food waste in our city of Edmonton - we go by Our Servings.
I am Mursal Khedri (B.A. Psychology), and my partner is Ria Rana (BSc. Neuroscience). We are both proud University of Alberta alumnae.
The concept of the app began as a group project for a class Ria and I were taking at the Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta. We spoke to dozens of people across various sectors --from farmers to charities to regulatory bodies. Everyone responded positively and enthusiastically to the notion of a unifying platform that can bridge the logistical gap that currently exists within Edmonton. Watch our group's vodcast to get a snapshot of food waste and insecurity in the city.
Our Solution
Through our community research, we identified that currently there are many communication gaps between surplus food donors and charities. They simply do not have the means to talk to each other. That's exactly what our app is going to do --it will be a platform for charities to post what they need for donations, and for donors to fulfill these demands. But that's not all.
Our vision is healthy equity for all.
Our mission is to find creative and innvotive ways to provide under-advantaged and food insecure populations with wholesome, nutritious servings.
Our initiative specifically focuses on perishables, like fruits and vegetables, and logistics prove to be quite challenging because of the short shelf-life of these foods. Our app will speed up the process of identifying supply and demand using real-time technology. We can save thousands of pounds of perfectly edible, nutritious food that our charities are in dire need of.
We have created a prototype in the form of a web app. We are currently developing a fully-functional version for iOS/Android and desktop that will be available for free public download.
If you are passionate about addressing food waste and insecurity in Edmonton, we need your help to cover the costs of engineering, design (UX/UI), and app testing.
We invite everyone in the community to be a part of our vision — to reduce food waste, and feed our neighbours.
In the meantime, we are working hard to raise awareness and get community support: https://edmontonfoodcouncil.org/tag/our-servings/
http://www.metronews.ca/news/edmonton/2017/07/10/sustainability-is-on-the-menu-at-fresh-meaet.html
https://www.facebook.com/uofapllc/photos/a.1007025722698551.1073741827.1006423362758787/1469474476453671/?type=3&theater
Organizer
Mursal Khedri
Organizer
Edmonton, AB