Every Friday, our developers get the chance to down tools, leave the roadmap and take data visualization in a new direction. They might try out an idea for a new feature, or experiment with an interesting dataset. One recent “Friday Project” led to a collaboration with a local charity: Cambridge City Foodbank.
Cambridge City Foodbank’s needs
As part of the UK-wide Trussell network, Cambridge City Foodbank strives to end hunger and poverty. The Foodbank’s Development Director, Liam Loftus, wanted to explore the deeper causes of food insecurity. To do that, he first needed to see how patterns of need change over time at different sites across the city. Understanding this data better would help the Foodbank to identify root causes, and direct their work with partners to address them. It would mean they could offer tailored support to the community, not just short-term relief.
What they needed was an easy-to-use analysis and reporting tool. That’s where we came in.
How technology helps
We already support the Foodbank through annual donations and volunteering, and were keen to share our technical expertise, too. Our data visualization toolkits empower users to uncover and communicate insights, and while this tool wasn’t built using our toolkits, the end-goals were the same.
Developers Julia and Jake used Google Colab to build a simple analytical tool and report generator. These gave the Foodbank team a more thorough understanding of usage and long-term trends, so they can optimize the support they offer to people in need. The team can look beyond numbers, and analyze aggregated data on the people that use their service. This leads to a better understanding of the wider personal challenges that have driven people to seek support.
Next steps
We’re working with Trussell to look at how this tool could be used more widely, to support improved data analysis and reporting at all 1,400 of their sites.
Liam said:
“We have such a wealth of data at Cambridge City Foodbank, about the services we offer and the people we support. But it’s often quite challenging for us without the necessary technical skills to really pull out the critical bits of information that can help us offer and improve our service.
“Our work with Cambridge Intelligence has produced a tool which makes it much more quick and easy to see key insights. And going forward, we’re really excited to think more about how this will transform the service that we offer.”
