City of Charlottesville
Stephen Hawkes, Applications Manager

Recently, Charlottesville City Council saw a need in the community to offer free meals to at-risk students attending City Parks and Recreation after-school programs. By using Federal food program funding, the city was able to offer free meal service at four facilities.

Unfortunately, data requirements of the Federal program created issues for Parks and Recreation; they struggled to keep up with the paperwork. By collaborating with the City's Information Technology Department, a mobile app and management console were developed to alleviate the recordkeeping issues and streamline reporting to the Federal program.

The new app was developed with a game-like design to appeal to children signing in for attendance. The simple, intuitive nature of the system also appeals to staff as it helps them easily note children receiving meals, add new children to the program and meet other data requirements, all in an efficient and easy manner.

Since the system went into production in February 2019, there have been 82 days where free meals were served at the four Parks and Recreation after-school facilities. In those 82 days, 403 children have been entered into the system along with more than 4,500 attendance records, and almost 3,000 free meal records. The new system has saved considerable staff time and significantly improved accuracy and integrity, as data is captured electronically on tablets and wirelessly transmitted to the database.

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