A team of University of Trento students with a colleague from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has been awarded a grant by the ECIU University. The team is designing an app that helps small local farmers deliver their produce. Now the students launched the second phase of the project, to take on board new team members with IT skills.

How can we help small local farms through a sustainable delivery system? Four students of the University of Trento asked themselves this question and came up with Fresh App, a project that was awarded the Transnational International Vouchers (TIV) grant of 5000 euros from the ECIU University. The ECIU University (TIV) grant helps the teams that solve ECIU University challenges further build innovation projects. Thanks to the funds made available by ECIU, the Fresh App project will now enter the second phase: the actual development of the app. This is a fundamental step to move from the idea to the product and really support local farmers.

Fresh App is one of the projects developed as part of the ECIU University challenges organized by the School of Innovation of the University of Trento. Challenges give them the opportunity to apply the knowledge learned in the classroom and put it into practice to help the local community and encourage technological progress.

The main ideas behind the Fresh App: supporting local agriculture is good for the environment; helping local producers; keeping jobs in the area, and promoting a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. But how can we give local farmers more visibility and help them expand their market? And how can this be done in an environmentally friendly way, avoiding generating additional traffic with traditional delivery systems?

The Fresh App aims to provide an online produce shopping service where you buy directly from local farmers. The service is available to citizens, restaurants, school and university canteens. The products will be delivered at locations that have already been identified by the producers – such as local or city markets – or by cargo bike directly to the customer's home. In this way, the impact of the delivery service on urban traffic is minimized. The project also aims to create vegetable stands in places where the producers can sell their produce and provide a convenient pick up location for their customers, for healthy, vegetarian and vegan diets.

The students who worked at the Fresh App project come from the master in innovation management (MAIN) of University of Trento: Francesca D'Agostino, Francesca Virzi, Mattia Rossetti and Emma Di Liberto. They were joined by Fernanda Sauca from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. But other skills are needed in the IT area for the second phase of the project – the actual development of the app. That's why the Fresh App team has invited other students to join the team and lend a hand. The project should be completed by the end of June, with other students from other departments who would collaborate in the context of the Start-up Lab.