Urban Health Partnerships, a South Florida non-profit organization that helps locals find food distribution sites through an AI-powered app, is expanding and enhancing its platform to help feed more people.
UHP, whose mission is to improve people’s health and well-being through different services and initiatives, was recently awarded a $50,000 grant from Citizens Florida, part of Citizens Financial Group, through its Champions in Action program that supports non-profits. The grant will go toward UHP’s and Food & Nutrition for All’s collaborative Community Food Finder platform.
The funding will be used to train staff in AI to help scale the program and expand its Food Finder Squad, which consists of volunteers who vet and verify food resource listings.
The Community Food Finder app launched during the government shutdown last October, when many workers were furloughed and SNAP benefits were withheld. “Our organization is founded on the belief that we need to work with the communities that we serve and that we need to really drive their leadership,” said Arely B. Lozano Cantú [pictured above], UHP’s director of health access and livability.
UHP encourages residents to upload photos of flyers and announcements or screenshots of texts and social media posts about local food distribution sites on the Food Finder app, to further spread the word in the community. The app uses AI to extract uploaded information and turn it into a sharable live calendar listing, after it has been reviewed and verified by UHP staff. Food pantries at churches and community food banks are examples of food distribution sites that are uploaded and shared. “There are very strategic ways in which nonprofits and organizations can ethically and purposefully work with AI in order to ensure that we can meet our goals,” said Cantú.
Since Community Food Finder’s inception nine months ago, over 300 food distribution events have been posted. UHP is hoping that the app will gain more users, and in turn, that more South Florida communities will have better knowledge and access to food.
“Artificial intelligence is changing how organizations operate, but many nonprofits don’t have access to the training and resources needed to take advantage of these tools,” said Jim Weiss, who serves as the president of Citizens Florida. He said that UHP “is helping close that gap by using technology to strengthen food access, improve information sharing, and better connect people with critical community resources.”
Over the past two decades, Citizens’ has awarded over $13 million to more than 420 non-profits.
Jeffrey Pressly, UHP’s community-engaged research & innovation manager, who uses AI software like Claude, vibe coding and Base 44 on UHP’s apps and website, spoke about Food Finder’s evolution: “Building out what was first a community action planning dashboard and an outreach navigator into tools that the community is actively using in real time – all done within a year, really speaks to our team’s dedication and also to the needs of our community.”
Future plans for UHP include the addition using AI to translate pages to Creole and Spanish, adding food distribution sites in Broward County, as well as featuring produce from local farms.
UHP launched version 3.0 of their existing Food Finder platform in July. With more updates planned thanks to the grant, version 4.0 might be available within the next few months, said Cantú and Pressly.
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