UN Launches App to Feed Hungry with a Simple Tap Tove Danovich - TakePart
go to original November 13, 2015

Video by World Food Program about the Share the Meal app (WFP/Norad Bistandsaktuelt)

A donation of 50 cents a day sounds a lot more palatable than roughly $150 a year, or $12 a month. Who doesn’t have two spare quarters? That pocket change could help to end world hunger - but the traditional model of soliciting donations by mail means that what amounts to a daily donation of 50 cents is barely enough to cover the cost of stamps and paper.

Instead of costly mailers, return envelopes, and stamps, a new app called Share the Meal is billing itself as the first mobile crowdfunding app to end global hunger. U.N. leaders hope to use this low-overhead means to help Syrians fleeing the current conflict and other refugees in the future. The free app is available for iOS and Android.

As the app mentions upon login, “Smartphone users outnumber hungry children by 20 to 1,” and its goal isn’t just to get people to help feed hungry children via the World Food Programme - first in Lesotho and, once the funding goal is met there, other hunger-ravaged countries - but to get people to give and keep giving.

“We don’t want you to donate on one day,” said Massimiliano Costa, the app’s growth manager. “The biggest potential for such a product is to make a habit of donating.”

More than 64 percent of Americans own smartphones, and those people check their phones an average of 100 times a day. Nonprofits are hoping they can harness app and mobile-Web addictions to make giving as easy as checking another push notification on your lock screen.

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