 Now, I am excited to introduce to you some people who are going to share the smart solutions using their phone to reduce hunger and eliminate waste. Today, we have with us Laura Lavitt. Laura has almost 20 years experience in the community-based food service area and she is now Fresh Food Connects Product and Operations Director and she is excited to provide more opportunities to connect food and communities nationwide. We're excited to be here and share a bit about Fresh Food Connect with you. So Fresh Food Connect at its core premise is a tech platform to be able to connect backyard and community gardeners to hunger relief organization with a longer vision of how are we building more resilient communities with really just neighbor-supporting neighbor. So we were started in 2016 here in Denver, which is where I'm located, when three organizations came together to ask the question, if gardeners had an easy way to participate in hunger relief efforts, would they? And the answer was resoundingly yes, and we've really just grown from there. This past year in 2020, we did update to a mobile app and see from the chat a lot of you working in food distribution, food access, and so I know that you all are very well aware of and there's been a skyrocketing need of folks that are experiencing food insecurity and a lot of groups are looking at how can we diversify our procurement to ensure that there's enough healthy food to be able to support that need that is growing in our communities. And so that's really where we're focused is looking at kind of an untapped channel of food procurement in terms of home gardeners with an aim of increasing the amount of healthy local produce that's available in communities while also engaging more community members in this in hunger relief work. Next slide. So how we work is that we work with local partners that we refer to as operators because they operate Fresh Fruit Connect in their local community. And so we've tried to make sure that the tech platform is as simple and flexible to be able to be adapted to what those local community organizations really need for their own community. There are three roles within the app. There are gardeners, couriers, and non-profit. But the basic idea is that we work with a lot of gardeners who have small donations but that can aggregate to a meaningful amount. And so say you're a gardener, you have an extra five pounds of tomatoes. You find out about the app or your local operator and you download the app you add your donation organization either then we'll come pick it up and or you go and drop it off and it gets redistributed in your community. So we do have functionality both to facilitate that either pick up and or drop off models with the operators. So if you are a gardener and your organization has selected that they are willing to come and pick it up from your home or community garden you would add your donation and then on the designated time and look designated time and day you would set out your produce just on your front porch and the organization would come pick it up and redistribute it in there in your own community. And so drop off is similar in that you would still add your donation. You would add those five pounds of tomatoes. But in this case instead of setting it outside of your location you actually would drive or bike or walk to the designated location to be able to drop off your donation but within designated times and locations and dates that have already been predetermined by the operator and you have all that information to make it as easy as possible to make that donation. So in the case that the operator is utilizing the pick up model meaning they're coming and picking it up from your your home couriers are the role that do that. And so with the courier role it provides them all the logistical information to make it super easy and fast for them to be able to know where they're going gives them maps and knows the addresses and what they're picking up to make it just a super seamless process. So operators do have access to a mobile version and they also have access to a web app where they would spend more of their administrative time setting their locations, times also exporting data and generally managing their account. This is our tech stack. We work with a development company named Pixel and Texel which is based out of Dallas, Texas. So folks have questions about it just let us know. So this is a testimonial from one of our participants. Monica was in a situation where that she needed assistance and thankfully that assistance was available for her. And when she got to a place where she didn't need that assistance anymore and was able to have her own garden and was able to give back to her community with the produce that she was growing herself. So we really see this as a very meaningful way that people can contribute in their own community with really a focus on how we like I said, rebuilding that more resilient food system. So in 2019 we were operating in 23 zip codes. We are now operating in 985 zip codes across the country. So we have a proven strategy. We've had some success and we are currently scaling nationally. So if you're interested in getting involved we encourage you to download the app and share your bouncy if you're in an activated zip code. And if you're interested in bringing Fresh Food Connect to your community either as an operator yourself or you know of an organization that would be interested in partnering with us feel free to contact me directly and my email is laura at freshfoodconnect.org. So thank you so much appreciate your time.