da-pakistanii: Pakistan-born, Komal Ahmad, develops phone app to feed almost 600,000 homeless people
da-pakistanii: Pakistan-born, Komal Ahmad, develops phone app to feed almost 600,000 homeless people in San Francisco. While she was walking near campus one fall day, a homeless man approached her, asking for money to buy food because he was hungry. Instead of giving him cash, Komal invited the man to lunch. As they ate, he told her his story. He was a soldier recently returned from Iraq and had a bad turn of luck. “He’d already gone on two deployments and now he’s come back, he’s 26 and on the side of the road begging for food,” Komal said. “It just blew my mind.”It bothered her so she decided to do something about it. Within a few months, Komal set up a program at UC Berkeley that allowed the school’s dining halls to donate excess food to local homeless shelters. That program then expanded to 140 college campuses across the US in about three years.Komal, now 25 years old and CEO of a nonprofit service called Feeding Forward, is looking to expand even more into what she calls on-demand food recovery. Through a website and mobile app, Feeding Forward matches businesses that have surplus food with nearby homeless shelters.When companies or event planners have surplus food, they tap the Feeding Forward app and provide details of their donation. A driver is dispatched to quickly pick up the leftovers and deliver them to food banks. “These are huge cities that have absurd amounts of food thrown away every day,” Komal said. “We are trying to make the Bay Area a case study to say ‘Hey, if it works here, it can work anywhere.’ -- source link