Deutsche Telekom's digital services subsidiary, T-Systems, and Mercabarna, the wholesale market in Barcelona, have joined forces to launch an app to bring food to entities and groups in need during the COVID-19 crisis. T-Systems is providing the technology and Mercabarna and the companies in said market the fresh food and the logistics and transport capacity.
Both companies have organized a 24-hour hackathon, in which a team of 20 T-Systems experts, working together with Mercabarna executives, have developed a solidarity marketplace that assigns the surpluses from the wholesale companies to social entities and to the logistics company in charge of transporting said food to its destination.
The project has received the support of two Mercabarna wholesale companies specialized in fruits and vegetables: Frutas Diego Martínez and Hermanos Fernández, as well as a logistics operator, also based in the wholesale market: TAE Transports.
The first social entity to benefit from this new application will be the Red Cross of Catalonia (which has 90 distribution points distributed across the region), but new social entities are gradually planned to join the project.
This innovative initiative adds to the charitable tasks that Mercabarna's wholesale companies have already been carrying out regularly, with their more than 100,000 kg of fruit and vegetables donated monthly to the Food Bank and distributed among 35,000 people in need.
For its part, T-Systems has contributed its technological and innovative capacity to the project with the disinterested participation of its experts. “The current COVID-19 crisis is highlighting the importance of technology to provide collaborative solutions. At T-Systems, we wished to help with our knowledge and technological capacity in order to tackle the difficult situation that the most vulnerable groups are going through. We are confident that we will overcome this crisis soon, and we believe that technology will help us achieve this," said Osmar Polo, General Director of T-Systems Iberia.
Source: diarioelcanal.com
