For families, the internet is a digital front door to services.
In 2020, 61% of all visits to US websites were made from a mobile device.
Our mobile phones connect us to the support services and resources that we need. Websites and apps are often our first interaction with program information. The quality of those digital resources can have a huge impact on our experience with a program.
Is your program website family-friendly?
Is the website or app easy to use?
Can I use a screen reader or other assistive technology to visit the site?
Is the information presented in wording that makes sense to me?
Is the information offered in the language that I’m most comfortable with?
Does the information seem up-to-date?
Do I know who to contact if I have questions?
Meals4Families works to give families reliable, accurate, and approachable information about programs that provide free food and money for groceries.
Helping NC families find free summer meals
Our 2021 Summer Team worked with the NC Department of Public Instruction School Nutrition team and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools nutrition team to explore communication about free summer meal programs. In collaboration with the Duke Clinical & Translational Science Institute, we conducted a paid, facilitated listening session where local parents shared their experiences with free summer meal programs. During this session, families highlighted the need for more than just basic information about the location and open hours for free summer meals. Can I take meals to go or do I have to eat on site? Can grandparents pick up meals? What’s on the menu today? How do I know which menu items contain pork? Which meal sites are easy to get to by bus? For families, the context around free summer meals programs is important, and this context can vary from one meal site to another depending on which organization is operating the meal site. Our 2021 Summer Team created a demonstration website that allows each organization that sponsors meal sites to create a custom page, with menu, programming, and other details specific to the meal sites that they operate. You can explore this demo by visiting www.meals4families.dev, and view the code that powers the website on Github. This web development work was supported by mentors and advisors at the Duke Innovation Co-Lab, the Open Design Studio at Duke, and the Duke University Office of Information Technology. We also reviewed existing communication channels, and drafted a series of recommendations for moving toward communication practices that connect families with the organizations who serve summer meals.
Helping Durham, NC families find food pantries
Our 2022 Summer Team is a partnership with the Tech for Equity program at Duke University. Our Summer 2022 fellows are working with End Hunger Durham to streamline their process for updating and publishing information about food pantries across Durham, NC. We’re doing this by implementing low-code solutions using Google AppScript to automatically create printable materials in English and Spanish from an existing Google Sheet of food pantry information.
