Mind Meals
Child Homelessness in NYC. Adverse the Effects of the NYC Shelter System on Children
Goal
Mind Meals. Lunch Box
The goal of this project is to reduce the adverse effects of homeless children who live in the NYC shelter systems. Through strategic design principles, the proposed solution consists of a meal box called Mind Meals which doubles as a play activity item. Mind Meals aims to enhance the learning and cognitive development of children aged three and older who are actively within the NYC shelter system.
Challenges
"Many kids do not have full access to all the shelter services such as food assistance and counseling for trauma effects–and they can’t get it because they’re kids”
-Ed Walz,
Vice President of First Focus Campaign for Children
Source: Coalition for the Homelessness, 2017/ U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Since 2010 homelessness has decreased 7 % across the US. However NYC has seen a 37.9% increase according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Homeless Children in New York City
- 24,251 homeless children slept each night in the New York City municipal shelter system in 2016
- More than 45,000 different homeless children slept in the New York City municipal shelter system in 2016
- There are 150 New York City municipal shelters
Effects of Homelessness on children
Source: American Psychological Association
Opportunity
Food is vital for children in their learning development. It provides energy to develop cognitive function and boost concentration (Feeding America,n.d.,2017). Food delivered to shelters is typically packed in simple and cheap plastic bags. It's package only serves containment purposes.
Current Food Model: Currently, there are several food recovery organizations or food rescue initiatives that partner with NYC shelter systems to eradicate hunger issues.
They aim to collect fresh food,non-perishable food, prepared-food and dry and frozen food from donors across the city such as restaurants, food markets, grocery stores, among others. Once the food is recovered, sometimes it is repacked by their volunteers and then distributed to emergency food programs, food pantries, homeless shelters, and other underserved communities in NYC.
Point of Intervention: Mind Meals will leverage the value of food delivery system. It will make use of the existing processes and resources to deliver an education to homeless children–adding a value proposition to enhance the learning experience through food packaging. It will re-generate and maximize the usage of current food packaging to be more meaningful to a homeless child.
Solution
Mind Meals is a meal box that doubles as educational play activity for homeless children within NYC Shelters. It is targeted to children aged three and older, and there are two different versions of content development available (readers and non-readers).
How does it work?
Mind Meals will seek for sponsors and organizations that want to improve their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) as well as making a social change by tackling the current children’s homelessness situation in NYC.
The sponsor's role will not only be for financial backing but also they will determine the educational and activity content.
The Mind Meals team will develop the learning activities for each box on a weekly basis. Each box will be manufactured out of recyclable and biodegradable cardboard and environmentally friendly soy based ink. Additionally, Mind Meals will partner with food recovery organizations such as City Harvest to provide the meals for each box. Mind Meals will have a member of it's staff working with these organizations to ensure that the meal box is packaged and distributed properly.
Examples of possible sponsors
Mind Meals Prototypes
Implementation plan
** This is a mock-up proposal, designed for the Design Futures Class at Pratt Institute.
Los Niños Team: Aigerim Mukhambetova, Apinya Rattananubal, Robert Sayegh, Rudolph Strelis, Fernanda Alvarez Leon
Role in Team:
