Mapping an End to Hunger in New York City

More than one million senior citizens, homeless people, immigrants, and "working poor" families in New York City depend on the city's network of charitable-food providers to get enough to eat. With demand for donated food steadily increasing as the number of resources stagnates, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, an umbrella group for the city's more than 1,000 unaffiliated food programs, wanted to find a way to help the city's soup kitchens operate more effectively.

The Coalition Against Hunger not only sought to compile a comprehensive list of all known soup kitchens in the area, but also to facilitate collaboration and communication between local pantries to help them reduce duplication of efforts, better target their limited resources, and unite in their public-advocacy efforts. To accomplish this, the organization decided to present its data visually using Google Maps .

"Sometimes soup kitchens can be right across the street from each other, and one won't know the other exists," said J.C. Dwyer, the Coalition Against Hunger's Director of Programs and National Service. He also noted that, ideally, the maps will also educate the public about the severity of New York's hunger problem and help people identify local soup kitchens where they can get involved.

Google Helps Feed New York

After some advice from a volunteer with data-management experience, the organization decided to embed interactive Google Maps in its site using the search engine's free application programming interface (API).

After entering a ZIP code, street address, or borough name into a search box on the Coalition Against Hunger's Web site, users see a Google map displaying charitable food organizations in that area, as indicated by red flags. Clicking on a flag pulls up information about that particular soup kitchen or pantry, such as its name, address, and phone number. The Google Maps interface also offers zoom and drag features, as well as the option to view the city via satellite image, with or without street names.

Nicoleta Floroiu-Aramburu, an AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) volunteer at Brooklyn's Bishop Charles Edward Cook Center for Human Services soup kitchen, has experienced the benefits of the mapping program first-hand. Floroiu-Aramburu is working to organize a network of food providers within a few Brooklyn ZIP codes and has been using the maps to help her locate local soup kitchens. She is also involved in a program that helps place student volunteers in neighborhood pantries. "Without the Google map, my work accomplishing these goals would be considerably slower, annoying, and less accurate," she said.

Besides sharing its data with other anti-hunger advocacy groups and potential volunteers and donors, Dwyer said that the Coalition Against Hunger hopes that the mapping program will allow local soup kitchens to better network, ultimately helping them to "feel a little less alone battling poverty in their neighborhood."

2006, New York Coalition Against Hunger

A screenshot of the Coalition Against Hunger's map, showing the 1,000
charitable-food organizations located throughout New York City.

Maps Based on Web 2.0 Technologies

Google Maps is built with a group of technologies known as AJAX (Asychrounous JavaScript and XML), a major component of the emerging Web 2.0 tools. In short, AJAX-based Web pages optimize user interaction by reloading pages on the fly without the need to contact a server. For instance, when users drag a Google map around or zoom in or out of a particular location, there is very little -- if any -- delay in processing time.

With the initial help of a volunteer Web developer, the Coalition Against Hunger began the process of adding Google Maps to its site in the fall of 2005. In the course of just a few hours, the volunteer designed the mapping program's basic infrastructure, including a map searchable by a single ZIP code and another that displayed all 1,000 soup kitchens.

At that point, another consultant, Ben Bakelaar, began the more intensive work of integrating the search functionality, optimizing the map's accuracy and speed, and fixing bugs.

You don't need to be a programming expert to add maps to your Web site using Google's API. "An intermediate level of coding experience is helpful," Bakelaar said, "but anyone with a basic knowledge of coding concepts should be able to utilize Google documentation." Although Google's API documentation is quite comprehensive and contains numerous code samples, Bakelaar also points to the Mapki wiki page as another good resource.

Google's API automatically integrates the satellite map's functionality, but it doesn't natively support geocoding, the process of assigning latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates to specific street addresses. In order for the map to properly display the soup kitchens and their physical locations, Bakelaar needed to know the geographical coordinates that corresponded to the specific street addresses of all 1,000 facilities, a process he describes as one of the project's biggest obstacles.

To obtain the necessary latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, Bakelaar employed the free ArcWeb services from ArcGIS, a collection of software tools for adding geographic-information systems (GIS) to applications or Web sites. With ArcWeb, users can find exact latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates simply by entering a street address in a search box. Once Bakelaar had compiled the data that would correctly display all of New York City's soup kitchens on a map, he then imported it into MySQL, an open-source database application.

In March 2006, the Coalition Against Hunger enhanced the map's functionality by adding the ability to perform more specific searches, such as by organization name, borough, or street address. The map also now features a link to the organization's volunteer-recruitment and donation system, giving the Coalition Against Hunger yet another way to reach out to those interested in donating their time or money.

Using Resources Creatively

At first glance, the Coalition Against Hunger's mapping program might seem intimidating, but Dwyer says that the initiative has been fairly simple thus far and hasn't required an excessive amount of planning. And because the organization employed volunteer developers and free resources from Google, ArcGIS, and MySQL, it didn't have to purchase any additional software or spend money on extra technical resources.

The Coalition Against Hunger will undoubtedly continue to use Google Maps to network charitable food organizations, attract volunteers, and share information with other anti-hunger advocacy groups in New York City. But Dwyer believes that the mapping program is also a great advertisement in and of itself, as it shows other small nonprofits with similar goals the value of using GIS data. "I'm a big fan of using existing resources creatively, as much as to stay within our own budget as to demonstrate that you don't need to be a huge NGO to take advantage of this stuff," Dwyer said.