See you soon!
.FoodHubber: our app for EMERGENCY
29/11/2024
Categories
On 16 October, World Food Day, EMERGENCY’s solidarity supermarket was inaugurated at Cascina Cuccagna in Milan.
It’s a different kind of news for these digital pages; and while it is certainly a good thing, you might wonder – what’s it doing here?
Simple: it’s very close to our hearts, because Aton is officially an EMERGENCY Friend.
You probably already know EMERGENCY and what it does. It is a non-profit organisation (ONLUS) and NGO founded in 1994 by Gino Strada to provide free, high-quality medical and surgical care to victims of war, landmines, and poverty. It is well known for its work in war-torn countries, but alongside this it also carries out effective – and perhaps less well-known – activities in Italy, addressing issues such as poverty, marginalisation, mental health problems, lack of access to rights, and the aftermath of natural disasters.
Aton has been a Benefit Corporation since 2021, and we are committed to sustainable digital transformation: People, Planet, and Prosperity is our sustainability manifesto, a goal we pursue by applying technology to the people we are – our colleagues – to the people we serve – our clients – and to processes, making them more efficient. This commitment is well described in our impact assessment report, .People, a document that brings together everything we care about.
So, what connects Aton – a company providing digital solutions and services in the Retail, Fashion, CPG, and Energy sectors – with EMERGENCY, whose field of action is quite different?
Let’s take it step by step.
Our first contact was about a year ago. Mariangela, our technology partner and an EMERGENCY volunteer, called Gianluca – Aton’s Chief Sales Officer – to tell him about the need for a reliable partner to automate certain processes. The fact that this request came from a volunteer is very significant: anyone who knows EMERGENCY understands how important its volunteers are – in fact, they form the very heart of the organisation.
We enthusiastically agreed, initially more as an intention than anything else. We certainly wanted to collaborate with them, but the question was: what could we actually do in practice?
As is often the case in these situations, the intention turned out to be the key element: the contact, the enthusiasm, the decision to start talking. When there’s genuine intent, it becomes easier to spot the common ground – and that’s exactly what happened.
After all, what we do every day is identify needs, discuss them with our stakeholders, design solutions, and bring them to life; having the opportunity to put our passion for innovation at the service of the community was – and still is – a special opportunity.
Through these discussions, we focused on one challenge in particular: EMERGENCY was about to launch a “solidarity supermarket” (what a point of convergence!) in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan, as part of EMERGENCY’s No one left behind project and the Municipality’s Food Policy project. In essence, it would be a place where beneficiaries of the initiative – and anyone in need – could find dry and fresh food, as well as hygiene and household products, free of charge, thanks also to the recovery of surplus food from the local fruit and vegetable supply chain and large-scale retail.
Analysing the project, we identified the opportunity to develop an app for EMERGENCY capable of managing the process in detail:
In addition, by integrating stock management for the food hub and a set of tools to provide insight into goods flows – such as statistics and replenishment – .FoodHubber, our app for EMERGENCY, was born.
The extra touch is what we do best: tailoring the software to the characteristics of its users – in this case, the need for a simple tool, easy to use even for non-specialist volunteers, and straightforward to install. And for the first time, we released the project on GitHub as free and open-source software, with the aim of fostering a sense of community and social value.
On 16 October, as we mentioned, the Municipality, EMERGENCY, and all the partners involved inaugurated the Hub Aiuto Alimentare Cuccagna – a truly beautiful place, far removed from what one might imagine when talking about poverty assistance, further emphasising the “non-stigmatisation” and dignity of the beneficiary. We were there, representing Aton and the contribution we had the honour of making to this important project – our app for EMERGENCY – and we were proud to be able to call ourselves, with conviction, Friends.
Working with EMERGENCY is a rewarding experience, just as we expected… and so much more. It’s remarkable how the teams within the organisation differ from what we’re used to, and truly inspiring to see how the line between – let’s say – employees and volunteers is so blurred. Everyone is equally committed to achieving the same goal; and it’s no coincidence that our first contacts came through volunteers, without us even realising it – to us, they were simply EMERGENCY.
I was personally struck by the clarity of ideas, the ability to welcome our proposals without preconceptions and to discuss them openly; and above all, the ability never – and I mean never – to be discouraged or complain in the face of the obvious challenges of the work they do every single day. Truly special people, even before being part of an association we already knew was special.
And forgive me, but I’m a tech person – where else do you find an IT department that manages incredibly complex communication lines with countries at war, and systems that allow real-time monitoring of, for example, babies being born in a hospital in Afghanistan? It’s an honour to be, in a way, “colleagues”.
And so, here we are, having taken a first step. We hope it will be the first of many – in a world like ours, built on relationships, this is one we truly care about nurturing and growing.
Thanks to EMERGENCY and the Municipality of Milan for what they do, sometimes quietly and despite the difficulty of even talking about it in the right way; thanks to the volunteers and supporters who choose every day to be part of this; thanks to all the partners* who made this project possible; and thanks also to you for reading these lines – it was very important for us to share this.
See you soon!
*The Hub Aiuto Alimentare Cuccagna is designed and supported by Food Policy – Municipality of Milan; promoted by Associazione Consorzio Cantiere Cuccagna and EMERGENCY, Recup, EStà – Economia e Sostenibilità, Associazione Comunità Il Gabbiano ODV, and Fondazione ACRA; in collaboration with Fondazione Cariplo, Assolombarda, Fondazione Snam, Politecnico di Milano, and The Earth Shot Prize; with the contribution of Fondazione Azimut and the participation of Coop Lombardia, Supporto Popolare, and Falegnameria Cuccagna.
