Food Coupons And How It Can Be Better For Students.pdf

Food Coupons and How It Can Be Better, for Students Once I was eating at a cafe on a university campus. I sat facing a stall as I noticed a student who came to the stall and ordered food. As the food came, she reached out into her wallet and handed the seller a small piece of paper. It was a food coupon which the student affairs and welfare body usually give out to needy students. The seller looked at the coupon and shook his head as he returned it. The student sadly dug into her wallet once again and pulled out cash to pay for her food. There are university students in Malaysia who are going hungry every day. With the rising of tuition fees and the cost of living, some of these students are surviving on infrequent and/or unhealthy meals. It is our duty as people who are more fortunate to play our part in helping them out. Giving out free food coupons to those in need can be a good way to reduce their burden. These coupons should be easily distributed and redeemed. It should not be costly to produce and not easily abused. I believe that, with technology, we can solve a lot of the common problems that come with conventional food coupons. Among the problems with conventional food coupons are: -

-

Lack of transparency​ - A lot of the current implementations of food coupons are based solely on trust. Donors usually entrust food vendors with preparing and distributing food for students. Hard to track​ - It is hard to track how these coupons are distributed and redeemed. Fragile​ - Coupons are usually printed on small pieces of paper. It can easily rip or be misplaced. Open to abuse​ - These coupons are easily forged and misused. Inefficient​ - Destroyed or lost coupons are wasted and can no longer benefit anyone. Slow​ processing of food vendors’ claims by the parties issuing these coupons also discourages vendors from accepting them as it affects their cash flow.

I am proposing the use of digitally generated coupons that can be easily distributed.

With the wide use of smartphones, these coupons can be distributed through various free channels such as emails, social networks, and chat apps, thus eliminating the cost of printing. However, printing out these coupons should still be an option. A unique, hard-to-predict serial number can be generated for each coupon, reducing the chances of forgery and abuse. All the necessary data regarding a coupon should be transparent and accessible to donors. Donors should be able to see where and when each of their contributions is spent. Unredeemed and expired coupons can be regenerated and redistributed. Donations can be optimized to benefit as many students as possible thus reducing wastage. I am also proposing engaging with local food vendors to supply the food. Students should be able to redeem these coupons at selected food vendors nearest to them, inside or even outside the campus. For starters, these vendors could be existing vendors operating at the campus’ canteens. This makes it convenient for students to not have to go to a designated location during a fixed time period. The time required to process the vendors’ claims can be significantly reduced, as all the transactions are done online and in real-time. This will hopefully also contribute to generating more business opportunities for food vendors. How it works: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Donors purchase food coupons. Coupons are generated in the form of URLs. Donors distribute these URLs (coupons). Students open the URL on their phones displaying a QR code of the coupon. Food vendors scan the QR code and claim the coupon. Funds for coupon claims is deposited directly into the vendor's bank account.

With this, I would like to conclude that I believe we can use technology to work towards trying to solve what I consider a serious problem (along with more effective solutions by policy makers in reducing tuition fees and improving students’ facilities).