There were some questions coming up over the last few days. I take this as an opportunity to answer them publicly.

All the different pages, names and organizations are confusing. Having a concise overview would be helpful.

foodsharing.de (Infos on Wikipedia) stands for multiple things at once:

  • the association foodsharing e.V. that is located in Cologne
  • a website, that enables people to private peer-to-peer foodsharing
  • a website, that provides infrastructure for people to organize the saving of surplus food from cooperating stores

foodsaving.world is a new website, targeted at foodsaving groups from around the globe. The page was designed with the experiences of foodsharing.de in mind. The software that powers foodsaving.world is called ‘foodsaving tool’.

foodsaving.today is an online mag, in which foodsaving groups can publish news and articles, that are of interest to the world of foodsaving.

yunity.org is a network of people and projects, with focus on unconditional sharing.

Is it okay to send ideas about possible features to you, which are not part of the current foodsharing.de website but could be included in foodsaving.world?

Yes, for sure! Since we are not aiming for copying foodsharing.de, we have a lot of freedom and are looking for the best possible solution for all users. Feedback and suggestions are always appreciated!

You can write to us in English or German.

You can get an overview over the features we currently work on and the ones that are to follow next in our roadmap. Most of them are linked to their corresponding issues, where you can read more about them and follow the discussion.

Are you in contact with the working groups on foodsharing.de, which deal with the internationalization of the project and the website development?

Yes, there is some collaboration, but we need help.

Maintenance of foodsharing.de is currently done by Matthias. He gets support from Nick and some others. We are connected via the yunity Slack chat.

There is the new open working group “foodsharing International” on foodsharing.de, where information is supposed to be exchanged between Germany, Austria, Switzerland, us and other international groups. Tilmann and Janina of foodsaving.world are members there. So far no content was published though.

Do you already know when your page will replace the old foodsharing.de?

foodsaving.world is a completely new piece of software, that solves many things differently than foodsharing.de and does so on purpose. That’s why there is no plan for it to replace the foodsharing.de website.

The target audience are foodsavers from all over the world, who need to organize through Facebook, tables and phone calls as of now. Whenever they reach their limit communicating this way, foodsaving.world is there to provide another solution.

Is it allowed / wished for to already transfer groups from foodsharing.de to foodsaving.world?

Of course we are happy when foodsaving.world gets used! If you are interested in testing our page with a group of foodsavers let’s get in contact and talk about everything else via chat or call.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Whe it comes to transferring already existing groups from foodsharing.de though, please keep in mind the following: as of now a lot of frequently used features from foodsharing.de are not implemented on foodsaving.world (e.g. hierarchies, store teams, forums, chat). Furthermore, there is no way to automatically transfer any data between the two sites, which means that all the data would have to be copied by hand and all the group members would need to register on foodsaving.world again - either completely proactively or supported by an email invitation.

Is it possible to help you somehow, even without any technical knowledge? In which areas can remote people support your work?

Yes. Improving communication with the different foodsaving groups for example.

We could e.g. translate the relevant paragraphs from the yunity heartbeat, that gets published every two weeks, and make them available to foodsharing.de circles.

And if foodsharing.de groups were to publicly share their success stories, annual reports and ways to deal with common problems, it would be great to translate those as well. Then we could publish them to foodsaving.today. The articles are shared e.g. via facebook and could serve as inspiration for other people to start foodsaving as well.

Where can I meet you?

We don’t have an office and are scattered across Germany (and sometimes further). The easiest way to get into contact with us is through the yunity Slack, our team chat.

In case you want to invite us to an event, just write to us in above-mentioned chat or send an email to fstool@yunity.org.

Once in a while we hold developer meetings or other events ourselves. Info concerning those will be published on yunity’s events page and on fb.com/yunity.org.

I’d love to contribute to the development of foodsaving.world and I already know my way around code. How can I start? Is there a task list?

Oh that sounds like music to my ears! :) We indeed have some task in github issues, as well as in the roadmap.

You’ll probably need more info to really work on the issues. We’re happy to help in the yunity chat!