Pan-Lang

Food Pantry Management | PYGHACK 2020

Helping the language barrier between food pantry coordinators and non-English speakers.

Devpost (2nd Place @ PYGHACK 2020) | Website | GitHub | Presentation

About

Pan-Lang is an organizational web application designed to help local food bank organizers keep track of orders, maintain visitor records, and communicate with non-English speaking patrons. The original use case was to assist the food patrons, volunteers, and staff of the McKinley Foundation Food Pantry process their food orders and inventory.

My CS+Music colleagues and I developed Pan-Lang using React, Express.js, Socket.io, and Firebase. We won second place at PYGHACK 2020 and participated in the Global Business School Network (GBSN) Beyond Competition & Conference as part of the HUMLOG Challenge for finding innovative solutions for humanitarian logistics problems.

Mission

Food insecurity is an important issue in the Champaign County community. Nearly 15% of residents must deal with food insecurity. Many of these individuals are also ineligible for federal nutrition programs and must rely on local food pantries for meals.

On top of this, many of these individuals speak limited English, making it difficult for them to communicate their needs to food pantry staff. With Pan-Lang, our mission is to break this language barrier and provide a more efficient method of supporting those in need.