Introducing Curb Hunger
Welcome, we are Curb Hunger – a new charity with an innovative approach to tackling homelessness.
We’ll start by introducing our mission:
Curb Hunger is committed to alleviating hardship through providing some of the most essential items to the homeless – one curb at a time!
As an organisation, we paid very careful consideration during our development to what exactly we wanted to achieve. We not only designed our machines to provide food and essential supplies to the homeless, but also as a service to incentivise and ensure our users keep in regular contact with local support organisations.
Our core product is our vending machines, installed in key locations across the UK. We aim to provide sustenance, warmth, hygiene and other basic needs to alleviate some of the hardship suffered by the homeless. Machines dispense three free items per day, per user and items are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Items include nutritious food, soft drinks, warm clothing, sanitary and toiletry items, dog food, books and more. Women are given access to a fourth item once a month to cover basic hygiene needs. Machine use is strictly for those in need with vulnerable people who will benefit from machine usage identified in each area.
However, we not only designed our machines to provide food and essential supplies to the homeless, but also as a service to ensure our users keep in regular contact with local support organisations. Each machine will have a corresponding partner charity in the local vicinity and within walking distance. This will be in the form of a day-centre, homeless shelter, or other voluntary organisation that deals with the homeless on a day-to-day basis. The partner will help to deliver the model on the ground, as it is the location where our users will check-in on a weekly basis to continue receiving access to the machine. The reason this stipulation is so vital is because these services have knowledge of their local homeless population, dealing with them daily and are therefore better equipped to aid them in working towards a long-term plan for getting off the streets. They also have the capacity to offer drug and alcohol rehabilitation, counselling, medical care and more. This consistent engagement with local services is positively instrumental in breaking the cycle of homelessness.
Through working in concert with partner charities it enables us to combine services – It is important to note that Curb Hunger is not seeking to supplant the charities for the homeless that already exist – we seek to work with them.
At the most elementary level, Curb Hunger’s machines provide some of the most basic necessities to the most vulnerable in our society. At a time when the homelessness crisis is deepening, and government cuts have decimated lots of the resources available, having a debilitating effect on those services that do remain, Curb Hunger’s machines serve as a novel aid.
Thanks for reading and joining us on our journey!