Pantry Review

  This project was another non-profit project that would be based on feeding homeless people and those who were struggling financially. Although it's a very common idea especially in charity organizations, they integrated vending machines and finger scanners into these said vending machines. 

The vending machines would be all around the city of Memphis but mostly in places that are known to be impoverished. The vending machines would have food like granola bars, water, crackers, etc. They would be accessible via fingerprint that the person would have to be registered to access the contents of the machine. There would be the main building for the project that would be where people would sign up and include how many people there were in their family and so on. Given this information and their income, the person would be allowed to withdraw x amount of items in a given set of time that would refresh most likely daily.   The machines would be bolted into the ground so a particularly hungry person with a truck couldn't tow the whole machine and there were a few discussions about the look of the machine. Many said that the contents shouldn't be seen and instead digital images should be shown instead while others vouched for the simple glass cover that clearly showed the contents. 

One concern that annoyed me was  "will the machine be easily seen?" A lot of people were worrying about the visibility of the machine because apparently being seen using a charitable vending machine is bad. I understand that it feels bad to show that you lack money for basic necessities and its embarrassing but those who are truly struggling to get by most likely do not care if the machine is smack middle in a bustling city. It's why you see so many beggars on the side of the street with signs. They are admitting they need aid and I think they would be grateful for the machine no matter the location and making it seem like a regular machine or trying to hide its purpose seems trivial. I've been in a position like that before and I didn't mind at all when I got food because at the end of the day I had a meal and not having stomach pains at night is a lot better than feeling self-conscious and skipping out on food because I'm embarrassed. I think this project will do some good since it has a unique twist that will be able to help more people than projects similar to it.