Technology has always led a helping hand into many offline activities that we may not even notice.  Online message boards have helped spread information similar to the old style cork board with the push pin it in.  Texting from cellphones has provided ways for us to send money in times of natural disasters.  Even our way of mobilizing people for a cause has changed with volunteers giving time, money, and resources from all across the world for a unified cause.  Technology is also being used in a local project called Pixels For Food, to help feed families that are in need.

Billy Brown, VISTA Online Community Developer at the Community Center of St. Bernard created http://pixelsforfood.org so that people could have a way to donate to a giving catalog which feeds families.  Mr. Brown is apart of an organization called the Digital Arts Service Corps.  Similar to AmeriCorps, the DSAC places technology-centric individuals in a year long service position somewhere in the country to help a non-profit with their technology needs.  His tasks was to experiment with the centers social media presence, help with an end-of-year fund raising campaign,  and create an online giving catalog.  "An online giving catalog is basically a different way of giving a donation. Heifer International made it famous when they allowed donors to "buy" a cow, chicken, or pig for a rural village" says Brown.

Pixels For Food

After dipping his toe in the Twitterverse, his next step was to create a giving catalog, similar to the one that Heifer Intentional created.  With help from local tech group, GNO Code, the two parties set out to create the catalog in hopes to make it easy for people to donate food which would in feed families.  The website is a simple one-pager with 8-bit style graphics of food items such as strawberries, cereal, and brown rice.  Each item has a number of bags or cans it will provide along with the price.  Donors can simply drag and drop the items they want into a virtual grocery bag and the site will display what you are donating and the amount.  From there you can checkout.  For even the novice of web users, the process if very simple.

Each month, the site will change which organization the donations are going to.  This month's charity is Feeding America, which has more than 200 food banks and provides food to more then 37 million low-income families.  Hopefully this project and others like it will make it simple to donate to more worthy causes.  Currently this is still an on going project and Mr. Brown is working on getting the final parts of the checkout together but welcomes help from outside parties who want to contribute.