STEM-In-Action Fall Follow Up: The Meal Matchers

We can't believe that we're already halfway through our STEM-In-Action Grant Fall Follow Ups, where we check in with our 22-23 STEM-In-Action Grant winners to see what they've accomplished since NJ&EE! The U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) awards five STEM-In-Action Grants of up to $5,000 to eCYBERMISSION teams wishing to further develop and implement their projects in their communities. For our third Follow Up, we're checking in with 8th-graders (now 9th-graders), the Meal Matchers.

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We are the Meal Matchers, a group of high school freshmen from Las Vegas, Nevada. We teamed up in 8th grade and decided to participate in the eCYBERMISSION competition. Our team is composed of 4 members, including Arya Salvaji, Yashasvi Mantri, Dillon Goudie, and Avi Khorana. We were first introduced to eCYBERMISSION in 6th grade during the pandemic by our science teacher. After that engaging experience, we decided to later continue this competition in the 8th grade.

The problem we have decided to tackle is food insecurity, one of the most pressing issues in America currently. More than 10% of Americans cannot support themselves financially enough to buy food. We aim to solve the problem of food insecurity by optimizing the food distribution process to help more food reach the food insecure. The food distribution process aims to solve this problem by circulating food from businesses such as grocery stores to food distribution centers such as food pantries, using volunteers. 

The current food distribution process has many inefficiencies, reducing the impact of their efforts. In order to solve these inefficiencies, we have created a website that improves the efficiency of distribution between the grocery stores, food banks, and distributors of the food. With our idea in place, more people will have access to food, and less food will be wasted through the inputs of our 3 stakeholders. Our 3 major stakeholders are business centers, volunteers, and food distribution centers. The business centers are able to display items that are near their expiration date and notify food distribution centers what food is available for donation. Our website also allows for volunteers to sign up and claim volunteering hours, where they can help distribution centers by picking up items from the business centers or giving out food to the food insecure. 

Our team plans to use the STEM-In-Action Grant to fund our research and learning tuition needed in order to create our application and the cost of buying a domain plus a subscription that would aid us in creating our application. The cost also includes registering a business with the state of Nevada, establishing a 501c3 organization (non-profit organization), and paying IRS fees. Marketing is another cost because it is essential to attract stakeholders in order to be able to publicize our project in our community.

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Food insecurity is a huge issue in the United States, and we are impressed by the Meal Matcher's decision to take it on! We'll look forward to hearing about their progress again this spring. 

eCYBERMISSION registration for the 2023-2024 competition is open at www.ecybermission.com/register, and Mini-Grant applications are are open until November 16 at www.ecybermission.com/minigrantprogram. For questions about eCYBERMISSION or help with registration, email missioncontrol@ecybermission.com.

Faith Benner

Sr. Communications and Marketing Specialist