The objective of this project is to connect hungry people in need with a meal provided by any number of restaurants or other organizations.
Organizations who already service people in need help them sign up and register for the service. This is accomplished with their mobile phone through an SMS gateway. Yes, the US government provides mobile devices to people of need -- many of them use temporary cell phones.
Once the account is established they can send a text the shortcode to start an order. A few questions and text messages later they will have created an order and received instructions on how and where to pick it up.
On the backend we employ volunteers through various organizations and automation to fulfill and pay for the order at a local restaurant. Through the user interface a volunteer is given an order to place and a secured, tracked and audited method to pay for it. When the order placement is complete the volunteer simply moves on to the next order for fulfillment. There is a desire to be able to begin fulfilling orders in a more automated fashion in the future without human efforts.
48 million Americans struggle to put food on the table every day.
Hunger in the United States is not due to a scarcity of food; it is due to lack of access to it.
That is absurd.
Hunger is not limited to a specific generation, gender or race. It affects millions of children, teens, working parents, veterans and seniors in every city. Armed with the knowledge that over 50 percent of homeless youth and veterans have access to a cell phone, Not Impossible Labs is tackling food insecurity in the United States by connecting people to accessible and available meals through simple mobile phone technology.
Since 2009, Not Impossible Labs has been fighting a revolution against the absurd and making the ‘impossible,’ possible. We are a global network of renegade engineers, builders, creators, hackers, inventors and designers devoted to disrupting the status quo. We use technology to solve humanity’s biggest problems and, in the process, tell the story of how helping one can lead to helping many.
HNI is a simple SMS-based program connects those in need of food to local restaurants.
- Participants sign up for HNI through their local community organization by providing their name and phone number
- Up to 2x per day, participants can text “Meal” to a the dedicated HNI short code when they are hungry or need a meal
- Participants choose where they want to eat from a list of three nearby restaurant options
- Participants choose their meal from a list of healthy menu options
- Participants pick up their judgement-free meal from the nearby restaurant like any other customer who has placed an online order