DKJA Engineering Team Partners with FAU to Make a Difference

The Claire and Emanuel G. Rosenblatt High School Engineering Team presented a demo of their year-long project in partnership with Dr. Jason Hallstrom at Florida Atlantic University’s ISENSE lab. 

 

At the start of the 2020-2021 school year, the DKJA team partnered with B’nai Torah to collaborate on their TLC Little Free Pantry, a self-serve food pantry. The TLC Little Free Pantry, created by Summer Faerman, provides non-perishable food to anybody in need. The engineering team set out to solve the problem the pantries were facing -  volunteers not knowing when the pantries needed to be restocked, and community members showing up for food only to find an empty pantry. 

 

The team designed and implemented recording capabilities that allow volunteers and users to report on how much food is in the pantry. This important detail allows the community to know where food is needed and if food is available by relaying if the individual TLC Little Free Pantry is empty, half stocked, or fully stocked. The team developed and created a fully functioning website with reporting capabilities, and are working on adding QR codes to existing pantries. These QR codes will prompt users and volunteers to visit the report page and indicate the level of food in the pantry. They also created a working prototype of a push-button system that will allow users to report the status of the pantry. This invention removes the barrier of a person needing a smartphone to access the reporting system.  

 

The TLC Little Free Pantry is currently in over 35 locations across Florida. To visit the website they created and to find one near you visit: www.tlcpantry.org

 

We are incredibly proud of our engineering team and look forward to them installing a pantry on the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County Campus.