Share Meals

Inspired by the story of an NYU student who only had $25 to feed himself for two weeks in New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world, Share Meals was created to solve food insecurity in higher education.

Hunger in our community is real, especially in college campuses.

Many students have to choose between housing, transportation, paying bills, the cost of living or having a meal plan. Students from low income backgrounds often find it difficult to afford nutritious food. Ironically, there are other students with meal plans who do not use them all, so there are students going hungry sitting next to students with extra access to food in the same classrooms.

Share Meals aims to alleviate food insecurity on college campuses by empowering students to share meal swipes with each other. In addition, we are exploring long term solutions, such as establishing community cooking classes, supporting urban agriculture, and collecting food insecurity data.

70% of NYU students experience some level of food insecurity

We’ve been running for 3 years with tremendous success on a shoestring budget, but if we want to expand, we need funding. We’re exploring sustainable ways to generate income but need some help jump starting the process. Donations would be used for:

- Non profit registration fees
- Operational space
- Hiring expert services, like accounting and legal consul
- Subsidized trips for students and interns to conferences like Universities Fighting World Hunger
- App developer licenses and server space
- Funding for pilot programs like our community cooking classes before they attract official funding

We were recently featured in the NYT (click here) 

We’ve received messages from the University of Missouri, Tufts, UNC, Villanova, The New School, The University of Brighton, UK, and the University of Technology, Malaysia asking to bring our Share Meals App there to serve their students.

Your donation would be highly appreciated. You can help combat hunger on the college campus, helping thousands of low-income students. You can make a big difference.

Our founder, Jon Chin, delivered a TEDx Talk last April at the University of Missouri.