Daily WOW: Copia App Collects Usable Food for the Hungry

Komal Ahmad was a student at the University of California Berkeley when she met a homeless man who was starving. She looked around at all the food that Berkeley’s cafeteria threw away and had an idea:

“Those who have and are wasting and those who need and are starving — and they’re both living quite literally right across the street from each other,” she told the New York Times. “That’s just ridiculous.” Ahmad started experimenting with ways that technology could help redistribute uneaten food to those who need it. Her first project was Feeding Forward, a local partnership with UC Berkeley’s cafeteria. It grew into Copia, a food redistribution app that has given away an estimated 600,000 pounds of food to 720,000 people in the Bay Area. During the Super Bowl, Copia organized numerous pickups from events and parties that fed over 41,000 people with food that otherwise would have gone to waste.

This technology holds the potential to revolutionize the way soup kitchens and other support institutions receive their food. Perhaps in 10 years we won’t see anyone walking around the streets hungry, and to this we say WOW!

To learn more about Copia visit their website here.