Bridge 2 Meal wins Rep. Lauren Underwood’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s 14th District

When asked what inspired the creation of Bridge 2 Meal, Navya Shah said, “My inspiration for the Bridge 2 Meal app stems from a belief I’ve held since childhood: no good food should go to waste while people go hungry. This vision first took shape in 2018, when I was in 4th grade and wrote an award-winning book titled Karma Spirits and Dark Moth. In that story, I imagined a technology that could connect surplus meals from local kitchens to nearby shelters, a fictional idea inspired by the contrast between abundance and need in my community. That concept stayed with me as I grew older and came to understand the broader reality of food insecurity.

“In high school, that early vision evolved into a drive to create real solutions for real problems. Although programming isn’t my main passion, I realized technology was the most effective way to do it. The computational and problem-solving skills I developed through my medical and research became the tools to transform my dream into reality.

“Before development, I thoroughly researched existing meal rescue and food redistribution apps, but I found that most did not address local accessibility or community partnerships. Many existing apps focus on selling leftover food at discounted prices rather than facilitating direct, free donations from local businesses to homeless shelters or domestic violence relief centers. None offered a reliable, real-time logistics system designed for community use, one that could coordinate meal donors, volunteers, and shelters with the transparency needed for prepared meal delivery. Bridge 2 Meal was built to fill that exact gap.

“This mission is also deeply tied to my work as the founder of Empower Futurewave Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to education, empowerment, and relief for those in need. Through our Empower Eats initiative, I’ve worked directly with shelters and restaurants that wanted to help but lacked an efficient way to connect. Bridge 2 Meal became the technological embodiment of that mission, a way to bridge generosity with need in real-time.

“Therefore, Bridge 2 Meal is more than a technical project, but the realization of a dream I have nurtured for years and a vital extension of my nonprofit’s mission. It represents how determination and compassion can turn an idea into infrastructure, transforming a simple concept into a solution that truly serves people. What began as a fictional idea has evolved into a system of hope, one that turns surplus into sustenance, technology into connection, and community efforts into lasting change.”