CUNY’s essential resources provide students essential needs in order to promote a healthy environment for education. This year’s CTP Hacks competition tasks us with increasing awareness and usage of through digital means. Our team decided to focus solely on promoting one of CUNY’s essential resources: food pantries.
Hunger and food security is among the top of the list of most unmet essential needs of CUNY college students, especially following the lockdown in 2020. Access to CUNY’s food pantries are limited due to several factors:
- Lack of a central information hub for all CUNY food pantries
- Inconsistent information about resource access
- Constantly changing links without proper updates leads to inability to make contact
Our web application aims to combat issues related to food insecurity on CUNY campuses by:
- Showing and guiding users to the closest food pantry by their location across all of NY
- Collecting all necessary CUNY food pantry information into one application
- Sharing this information in a way that makes it as fast and easy to reach a food pantry as possible
Users can:
- Read information regarding the severity of food insecurity amongst CUNY students, and the importance of promoting food pantry access to combat it
- Filter closest pantries by borough, appointment needed, or if the pantry is available to all CUNY students Access links to provided pantry information direct from the campuses themselves