The Green Cornucopia

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Inspiration

Our team is trying to solve food insecurity in Charlotte by redirecting surplus food to places that have food shortages. Nearly 15% of households in Mecklenburg County experience food insecurity, which includes an unhealthy quality of food as well as a shortage of food. Food insecurity has large health impacts on communities. People experiencing food insecurity are disproportionately affected by diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which are dependent on a person’s diet. In addition, food insecurity causes harm to a person’s overall health. Food insecurity directly affects households in Charlotte. This has an impact on children and adults alike, and food insecurity can lead to health problems for all ages and backgrounds, such as weakened immune systems, increased risk of chronic diseases, as well as mental health issues.

What it does

Our app allows a streamlined and simple way for places with excess food to connect with places that can redistribute the food to those who need it. It will thus be much easier to match companies with excess food to delivery drivers that can then deliver the food to a food bank. All three parties will have an easier time coordinating with each other because of the organization of the app. The Green Cornucopia is an app in which donors (places with surplus food), food banks, and drivers can log in and post what they need to get rid of or what they would like to be gifted. The app would allow each party to see other posts and interact with them, forging connections between parties and helping them work together efficiently. Our team can work with an existing food bank to receive input on the types of features we should add.

How we built it

We used the programming language React Native to build our application because it allows us to develop for both iOS and Android at the same time. We used VSCode and VSCode Liveshare to actually code the application, and GitHub for version control. We used Firebase for the database.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge in the development of this app was that we were unable to find many times where we could work together since we all have highly hectic schedules and even don’t go to the same school. This made coordination and organization nearly impossible. However, we were able to mitigate this issue by using version control tools like GitHub and making sure that we got a lot of work done at the times when we were able to meet together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are overall proud of the entire app. This was our first time using React Native to build an app, so we feel that we did a great job in developing it. In addition, despite having issues with collaboration and organization, we were still able to remain relatively coordinated, and were therefore able to finish the project on time. We are also proud of the networking that we did. We contacted many charities in the area who do similar work to what we are doing, and even scheduled a meeting with Mr. Richard Armenia, the Executive Director of Feeding Charlotte, one of the biggest nonprofits in the state in our field.

What we learned

In terms of technical skills, we all believe ourselves to be more competent in React Native, the main platform we used to create the app. In addition, we have learned how to manage our time well, avoid procrastination, and take responsibility for finishing the app. We also learned how to properly network our app so that we can get it off the ground once we fully finish development.

What's next for The Green Cornucopia

We fully aim to publish our app to the App Store and register it as a nonprofit. Before doing that, however, we need to add extra features and also make our app look better and cleaner. We plan to add AI so that requesters get recommended posts that are relevant to what they have, and vice versa. We plan to add a reward system for delivery drivers and a way to ensure that the food is not being tampered with (Currently, we just run extensive background checks and verify any people that request to be included in our app). By making all of these changes, we believe that we can make The Green Cornucopia a revolutionary service assisting in alleviating food insecurity in our community.