Hacking Hunger – Episode 38: It All Started With An Insight: How Feeding the World is at Your Fingertips

For four years, the United Nations World Food Programme’s Innovation Accelerator has been tapping the brightest minds in innovation to help fight hunger. In October 2019, it came to the U.S. for the very first time, hosting a five-day bootcamp and pitch night in Silicon Valley. Eleven start-ups – some with more experience than others – participated in the event, including ShareTheMeal, an app that enables people to donate food with just a tap of their fingers.

Why an app? Turns out smartphone users outnumber hungry children by 20 to 1. Now, with a quick download and a few taps, people can easily offer donations from 50 cents for a nourishing food bar all the way up to $150 a year – and the U.N. World Food Programme delivers meals directly to kids. Today, ShareTheMeal provides 1 meal every 3 seconds to people in need. That’s more than 11 million meals.

ShareTheMeal is an Innovation Accelerator alum – it’s actually the first innovation the Accelerator supported – but it returned to bootcamp this year to learn how to grow even further. In episode 38 of Hacking Hunger, we sat down with Max Costa, head of ShareTheMeal, and Nishkam Mehta, a super user, to learn more about the incredible impact the app has had, and what’s in store for its future.