Hunger Maps for Free Summer Meals

There needs to be better ideas contributing from all sectors to eliminate hungry, poverty and wastefulness of resources.

The idea below comes from Google, using its maps to offer wider accessibility for social services.


August 22, 2008, 3:23 pm
Hunger Maps for Free Summer Meals

By Jennifer 8. Lee


Can you fight hunger through a Google maps mashup?

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger believes that, in part, you can, which is why it has rolled out maps of the five boroughs showing where kids can get free summer meals. Last year, the city began an aggressive program to offer free breakfast and lunch in housing projects, libraries, day camps and church groups. Only about one-fifth of the children who get free school meals during the academic year nationwide also get access to the summer meals.

"This is one of the biggest problems with summer meals — it's completely federally funded but drastically underutilized because there is a lack of outreach," said J. C. Dwyer, who helped organize the project while at the coalition.

The plotting of food resources was sparked by a 2006 project that mapped the city's soup kitchens and pantries. That technology drew wide interest from the social services community. "We started getting phone calls from people around the nation asking how to do it," said Mr. Dwyer, who now works in Texas.

Mr. Dwyer, along with a Eamon Johnson, a management consultant, and Brody Berg, a former Microsoft programmer, started Hungermaps.org. "I think there is large number of software developers out there who would want to do something more meaningful with their time," Mr. Dwyer said.

So far their software has been used to map soup kitchens in Anchorage; food stamp offices in Minnesota; summer meals in Boston; and urban food recovery in Seattle.

"With this we tried to hone in on a specific issue, one that I had a background in and one that is imminently mappable. You are talking about physical resources that exist," he said. "It's a logistical problem."

So far, they have 95 registered users on Hungermaps.org who have made some 250 maps.

"It does seem obvious. but the non-profit realm tends to be five years behind the technology curve," Mr. Dwyer said. "I think it speaks to tack of technology adoption by nonprofits. They are really risk adverse. They don't have a lot of money to throw around and make mistakes with."

The coalition said it has encountered skepticism about whether or not it makes sense to invest the resources in technology for low-income families.

Joel Berg, the executive director of the coalition, argues that indeed it is. "One pantry director told me that his clients actually now have more access to Internet than food," he said.