Native Tynesider Paul McMurray believes that we can end food poverty in our life time. A bold claim and one we are excited to explore with him in what promises to be a fascinating and important talk.
The rise of food banks in the UK and elsewhere over the last decade has been both shocking and rapid. Their existence speaks not only of food poverty but the human kindness within communities wishing to support others with this most basic of human needs.
However food donation is problematic in itself, some things donated can’t be used, there is too much of something in one bank and not enough in another. And donating is often an afterthought and easily forgotten.
Enter Paul McMurray. By day all things people and software at Accenture and by night, all things Tech4Good and trying to solve food poverty through the use of technology, with a mission to join supply chain, supermarkets, food banks and hungry people together.
Paul will tell the story of his work and of Donation Genie, which was originally developed to let shoppers know what their local food bank needs so they are sure their donation is being used. The development of Donation Genie was the opening of a can of worms around the challenges of solving the problem of hunger, such as how food is redistributed and the lack of tech skills and technology in the organisations and communities that he is connecting with.
