Homeless people just got the come up. Action Hunger, a new Nottingham-based homelessness charity, recently installed the first free-to-use vending machine that services the down-and-out.
The vending machines dispense the fire, three times a day 24/7, to displaced individuals, as long as they have a key card that allows them access.
Stocked in the vending machine are fruit, snacks, sandwiches, sanitary products and small items of clothing. It’s lit.
Founder of Action Hunger, Huzaifah Khaled, told Digital Trends in an interview what inspired the free vending idea – “the rising homeless population in the UK.” He added,
“It’s a terribly sad state of affairs, which inspired me to think of a solution that would contribute to alleviating the stresses of being homeless, and encourage regular contact with shelters, which is crucial to ending homelessness. I’ve spent the last year working closely with homelessness services to develop my idea into an organization.”
This was definitely a much-needed innovation to combat the growing population of homeless people worldwide.
Back in 2005, when the last homeless global survey was attempted, the UN found that there were an estimated 100 million people without cribs.
Habitat for Humanity also found, in 2015, that 1.6 billion people lacked adequate housing. That’s 21 percent of the world’s population.
For now, the only Action Hunger vending machine in existence is in Nottingham. But Action Hunger is looking to expand the free vending service to other major cities in Europe.
Like Manchester, London, Birmingham, and Brighton. In 2018, Khaled plans on installing machines in the US. In the Digital Trends interview, he said,
“We’ll be installing machines in the United States from February 2018… New York will receive the first machine, and Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle will follow. We’ve had a deluge of interest from many cities across America, and we’re working hard to reach as many people as possible. We’re also exploring locations across wider Europe.”