MealQuest by The Midnight Goblins (Social Good)

Inspiration

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity among the Australian population (especially among low-income learners, culturally diverse groups, Indigenous Australians, and those experiencing homelessness). Before the pandemic, food insecurity was measured to be up to 13% of the population and up to 32% of the Indigenous population. Foodbank has reported a double in reports of experiencing food insecurity from 15% in 2019 to 31% in 2020 (mainly from casual workers or international students).

In a post-COVID world, after a year of isolation and worsening conditions, communities must come together from all walks of life to help out those who need it the most.

What it does

Volunteer high school students, volunteer mentors, and business owners are connected via a central app to organize random weekly volunteering opportunities.

Business owners

Owners of various organizations (cafes, restaurants, schools) can volunteer to have their business as a MealQuest host. Verified and MealQuest ready organizations in a neighborhood remain in a database to be be randomly picked each week and assigned a random volunteer team of mentors and students.

Mentors

These volunteers use MealQuest resources to organize events and mentor students and protect their well-being and health. If you are randomly picked for the week, find recipes, organize your team, and help distribute prepared food to food banks.

Students

High school students get an opportunity to help those in need in their community and make new friends in weekly experiences in a communal kitchen. Work with new people all the time due to the random assignment technology

How we built it

Initial lo-fi design mockups and brainstorming was done on a Miro board and hi-fi mockups were completed in Adobe XD.

Back-end was built with Python and Flask and Front-end with various React frameworks. This front-end was eventually scrapped and turned into a HTML5 + CSS front end using Nicepage.

Challenges we ran into

We are all first year students and this was our first hackathon so we had to use a lot of new technologies for the first time. Semantic UI for React was frustrating to use and our eventual move to Material UI was not fast enough to be able to complete the prototype. Furthermore, our full stack developer and the rest of the team ran into difficulties with integration of the back-end into the front-end which resulted in a last-minute change in front-end technologies.

Furthermore, the team's initial ideas for the various systems to put in place was difficult to complete in the limited time frame.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Managed to get a working prototype while sticking mostly to the initial design mockups. Got a working login/signup system and a payment system. Github Repo

What we learned

We picked up a lot of new skills, especially in Flask and React and learned practices to avoid for the future.

What's next for MealQuest

• Expand on prototype and complete with points and a leveling system, create communal funds, assign random weekly events, a mentor page (log in person donations, roll call), and a food donation logging system
• Create a revamped front-end in React using the work already completed on that end
• Get communities in Australia MealQuest ready
• Expand using marketing and donations
• Fulfill goal of creating a more sustainable Australia, reducing waste, and decreasing food insecurity

Built With

• css
• flask
• html5
• javascript
• materialui
• miro
• nicepage
• python
• react
• semanticui