Mobile application Feedie turns participating restaurants and their patrons into philanthropists (albeit, lazy ones) by turning photos of ordered meals into actual meals for the hungry.
Users download the Feedie app (available for Android and iOS), connect it to their social networks and then use the app to capture and share pictures of their meals at participating restaurants. These restaurants, in turn, commit to paying for a meal for a child in need for each picture shared. Users of the app can follow other users or restaurants and can share info on the restaurants they visit with other users.
“You cannot teach a hungry child,” says Sue Wildish, MD of The Lunchbox Fund. “They literally cannot even focus. Providing a hot meal helps with focus, but it also provides behavioural incentive to get them to school and keep them in school.” The Lunchbox Fund has been serving meals to needy children since 2005 and Feedie is its effort to make the initiative self-sustaining.
“Every cent raised through Feedie goes straight into food,” Wildish explains. “All of our core costs, the running costs of our organisation, are covered by a fundraiser we hold in New York every year. So you can know there’s no bits and pieces coming off the backend. You are literally paying for a meal for a child with each picture.”