We thank everyone who has helped make the virtual brainstorm a success! Almost 60 new ideas were submitted for how we can end hunger in America.
Thanks goes to everyone submitting your original ideas and helping improve others. Our panel of judges will be reviewing all the submittals and we plan to announce the winners in the coming week. Let us know if you have any questions before then.
By the end of Monday, you can help end hunger in America and add a few dollars to your bank account. Just by taking a few minutes to pitch your ideas and improve others’ ideas, you could win the $1,000 cash prize for best idea or $500 cash prize for best collaborator.
To date, 49 ideas have been submitted and 160 people have helped make them better. With the enormous shift in how we connect, communicate, and create, no one has the corner on the market of ideas. In fact, we think the best ideas will come from people who are new to the issue of hunger.
Will you take a few minutes to help? You can make all the difference.
We invite disruptors and innovators of all types to join the online portion of the SXSW CauseLab.
Now thru Friday, May 28, you can add your ideas and suggest ways to improve other peoples’ ideas. Thanks to our friends at Goodzuma, we will award $1,000 to the best original idea and $500 to the person who helps others take their idea to the next level.
If you’d like to research the issue first, you can read this welcome letter and visual briefings provided by our charity partners, Share Our Strength and Feeding America.
Or, feel free to get started now.
We’re doing some Spring cleaning at WeCanEndThis.com and thought you’d like to know what’s coming next.
Thank you if you’ve taken the time to visit the Goodzuma platform to upload your new ideas and offer your ideas for improving what’s already been submitted. We’ve seen new ideas sprout up and more people helping out there.
You can go there now to see for yourself (use “sxsw” as the user ID and code).
And the CauseLab Idea Contest Winners are…
We are very grateful for the ideas everyone submitted to the CauseLab idea contest. Ending hunger in America is an achievable goal and this contest has shown the innovation we need to solve it is all around us. Thank you for making this such a success.
After reviewing the sixty ideas submitted to the CauseLab idea contest, we have decided on the winners for Best Idea and the Best Collaborator. Here’s the story as told in collaboration with our partners at Goodzuma.
Best Idea: Gap Calculator by JC Dwyer
Gap Calculator asks us to better measure the hunger need in America and identify existing resources as the first steps toward a solution. The Gap Calculator would allow us to answer the questions:
Functionally, the gap calculator combines data from multiple sources into an equation representing the totality of hunger relief in America. The equation can then be compared to need estimates calculated according to specific geographies. The ability to customize the Gap Calculator will show people how they can help end hunger in their own communities and its shareability will ensure that it is both a tool for empowerment and awareness.
JC Dwyer currently resides in San Antonio, TX and has worked with a variety of anti-hunger organizations and is the voice behind @TexansvsHunger on Twitter. He told us that the inspiration for his idea comes from a quote he heard from New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg and paraphrased from the famous management guru Peter Drucker:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” – Mayor Mike Bloomberg
Honorable Mention: Family-to-Family by Pam Koner
The CauseLab was also an opportunity to highlight ideas that are already being implemented in the real world. For the past eight years, Family-to-Family has operated on the simple premise of connecting families with more to those with less. Pam Koner and her all-volunteer team have launched a number of successful online family-to-family programs that have built greater empathy and understanding. Here are but just a few of their programs:
Family Sponsorships – The program that started it all, families make a yearlong commitment of $31.21 per month to provide 7 dinner-type meals (including fruits & vegetables).
Birthdays in a Box – Families can help provide a mother with the supplies to throw her child a birthday party – something that isn’t always possible when times are tough.
Victory Garden Project – For those seeking to help in a more sustaining way, this program outfits a family in need with the tools and supplies to plant a garden of their own (including chickens) with the help of a local master gardener.
Building on their success, the Family-to-Family website is undergoing a major update that will be completed by the fall and will make it possible to scale their programs significantly. Keep on the lookout for them — you might see their work in helping families in the Gulf Coast affected by the oil spill.
Best Collaborator: Shereen Brown
Great ideas come from the minds of people working together. Not only did Shereen Brown submit three of her own ideas, she invested time and energy in helping to improve the ideas other contestants submitted. Shereen is from Boston, MA, and volunteers with all types of organizations and describes herself as someone who is “in tune to what is happening and what needs to happen for social change to occur.”