Why I am working on Unsung
I still remember August 31st, 2015, driving down to Baltimore to meet with Jason King and tour the new Unsung HQ (an awesome co-working space with free coffee and massage chairs). At the time, I just returned from Munich after a 7 month internship and was eager to join up with Jason to work on a ambitious app to end hunger. It’s now almost 1 year later and we’ve just launched our crowdfund to flip the switch and turn on the app for beta testing in Bird City.
So how did I get here?
I met Jason King back in 2014 at Bitcoin in the Beltway, a conference he hosted to network the rising builders in this brand new cryptocurrency space. At the time, I was rather new to the bitcoin scene having only briefly freelanced logo and website design for coin and I was looking to meet other students and enthusiasts to increase my involvement in the space.
I knew of King’s name through Sean’s Outpost, the most popular cryptocurrency charity at the time which turned bitcoin donations into direct meals delivered to the homeless in Pensacola, Florida. Thus, I was more than excited when I got the chance to meet him and other cryptocurrency students at this conference, which arguably was the start of what brought me here today. Meeting all these ambitious people trying to change the world made me realize that I, even as a young sophomore in college, had the capacity to join them.
Over the next few years I worked with the College Cryptocurrency Network (which I now run and rebranded as BEN) and also would help Jason with occasional design projects for Sean’s Outpost. At the time, I wasn’t passionate about homelessness as much as I was trying to build up connections, reputation, and skills. Yet it was through these occasional projects that I began to share Jason’s frustration with homelessness and hunger.
It’s funny, it’s not like I didn’t support feeding the homeless before I met Jason, but I truly didn’t grasp the scope of the problem. If you were to have asked me before meeting Jason if I supported helping the homeless, I would have given a resounding yes while probably (and hypocritically) looking-the-other-way when meeting someone in real life. I grew up as a sheltered white christian boy in an upper-middle class suburb and touted patronizing views of people who fell between the cracks in society. If you tried to critique my double standard, I likely would have responded “oh, that person would just buy drugs with any money I donate” or “it’s their fault they fell behind, there are tons of resources available to get off the street, so that homeless person is probably just lazy, incompetent, or both”.
If you tried to critique my double standard, I likely would have responded “oh, that person would just buy drugs with any money I donate.”
These sheltered beliefs became embarrassing self-reflections the more I worked with Jason and heard stories of people I might have scoffed at before. I didn’t realize that more than half of all Americans experience poverty at some point of their life, often living paycheck to paycheck and are one accident away from falling further behind.
Of those in poverty, 49 million Americans live with food insecurity… that’s 14 million more people than the entire population of Canada!
How is it possible that so many people in the richest country of the world don’t know where their next meal is coming from? How can we expect people to reach their full potential and contribute to society if they are focused on their most primal level of their hierarchy of needs.
Couple this hunger problem with the fact that Americans throw away an aggregate of half a trillion dollars worth of food every year. This is most absurd problem for the richest nation of the world to have, especially at such ridiculous proportions.
How can we expect people to reach their full potential and contribute to society if they are focused on their most primal level of their hierarchy of needs.
Jason, you got me hooked, let’s #HackHunger
Jason has been working on the idea behind Unsung for quite sometime. Originally announced at a 2014 bitcoin conference in Orlando as “Outpost Everywhere”, Jason realized that the hunger problem was best solved with a sharing economy rather than setting up a franchise of food-shelters. No matter how efficient or effective his organization was, the amount of meals donated (over 150k in 2015!) will always pale to the number of meals needed to solve hunger completely. Now we just need to figure out how to build it.
The hunger problem is best solved with a sharing economy rather than setting up a franchise of food-shelters.
How do you build a sharing economy to end hunger?
Before I joined up with Jason, I held subconscious prejudices against the homeless. If Unsung required a sharing economy of regular people to participate in solving their communities hunger problem, we needed to overcome the same myths and stereotypes I held before.
I still remember doing my first Unsung run to test the app. It was New Year’s Eve and also freezing cold outside. Jason ran many meals through the app already yet it was my first experience doing a run. It was New Years Eve and we received a large donation of excess catering food from a wedding. Admittedly, I was actually more nervous than I let on at the time. I’ve never driven around a city handing out meals and I had no idea what sort of reactions we’d receive.
Would people be insulted and sneer at me for talking “down to them” as I offered food? Would they be angry that I’m offering food instead of cash? How do you ask if someone needs a meal in the first place, what words should I use?
[I was nervous because] I’ve never driven around a city handing out meals and I had no idea what sort of reactions I’d receive.
As we drove up to the first delivery, my mind was racing with these thoughts and yet I was trying to save face around Jason. This isn’t something I would have done on my own accord, yet I couldn’t possibly refuse going with Jason who did this over 150,000 times beforehand.
Jason rolled down the window and simply asked, “Hey man, are you hungry?” holding a box of food extended out the window. The guy smiled, gave a cheery, “That’d be great!” and accepted the box. I still remember the look of pure delight on his face upon opening the box and seeing fresh salmon, pasta, and vegetables. All the doubts that were racing through my head earlier vanished and was replaced with an adrenaline rush to keep feeding. It’s almost selfish donating food because the feeling one receives afterwards is better and more addicting than any drug rush or happy-hour. I look over to Jason and said, “That was fucking awesome, let’s do that again”.
I still remember the look of pure delight on his face upon opening the box and seeing fresh salmon, pasta, and vegetables.
This is just the beginning.
I feel incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to work on Unsung. What university student gets to humble-brag that they are working on a logistical end to hunger in the US?
Our team has made incredible progress over the past year. We have a MVP application, built relations with food providers in Baltimore, and created a variety of resources/media to promote the project. Yet now is the time to put our idea to the test.
We just launched a crowdfund on Indiegogo’s new GENEROSITY platform for Non-Profits. All proceeds raised from this fundraiser are tax deductible (we are a 501c3 non-profit) and will go directly towards helping us further build and distribute Unsung.
For example, this will allow us to do cool things like:
1. Launching on the iOS Appstore
2. Building an Android version of Unsung
3. Launching on Google Play
4. Making sure our developers don’t starve.
5. Helping bring our technology for helping feed people, to as many people as possible (look at all the times I said people and helping)
The idea behind Unsung is very important to us, and we hope to share our enthusiasm.
We believe we are building one of the most innovative solutions to helping solve hunger and food waste in the US.
And we could really use your help.
Checkout our crowdfunding campaign on Generosity to learn more about our project and lend your support. We’d love all the help we can get to make our vision a reality across the US!
Cheers,
Dean
