Bronx waitress creates a mobile phone app to end hunger in the city
Andra Tomsa started the nonprofit Spare Change to raise money from bar patrons. Now users of the new app will get to track how much they donate and win free drinks.
This fetching Bronx waitress really is dishing up change.
Andra Tomsa wants to end hunger in the city — and now she has a cellphone app to aid her cause.
The 27-year-old stunner — who works at Charlie’s on Lincoln Ave. and holds a master’s degree in economic development from Fordham — started the nonprofit Spare Change last year, encouraging customers at select bars and restaurants to round their dinner bills up to the next dollar and donate that money to charity.
Now, Tomsa is going high-tech with an app that will allow participants to track how many times they’ve donated — and how many people they have helped — in real time. Participants can also receive gifts like free cocktails from the participating bars.
This is a real tangible difference.
“I realized that there was a ton of money exchanging hands in the service industry,” Tomsa said of the idea. “What other charity can you donate to and see a real-time effect?”
Users can download the app from sparechangeintl.org, use it to record how many times they’ve rounded up and receive free drinks and other goodies from participating eateries and bars when they hit donor targets.
The vision for Spare?
While she plans on expanding to other charities, Tomsa is currently partnered exclusively with the Food Bank for New York City.
Andra wants to use the SPARE model to close a city’s meal gap, one round up, one user at a time in real time. Ultimately cultivate the habit of donating small amounts to create a lasting impact towards solving social injustice and inequality. Taking this idea abroad, to developing nations, it can create a global perspective shift, showing people that we are stronger together than we are individually, and that philanthropy, when done right, can solve seemingly insurmountable problems.
Spare may not a ways to go to collect the spare change we normally take for granted, and let fall through the cushions. However, this seems like an affordable way to affect changes by the masses for the masses. Phone apps changing the world…what’s next – Xbox games?
Read more of this story on NYDailynews.com.
