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I want to create an app to find food sharing places.

These places are shelves or public fridges where people can put their food before going on vacation or when they have too much, so that other people can use it. Berlin has about a hundred.

Where can I find a database that contains the geographical coordinates (and possibly other details) of these places?

Ideally for the whole world, but regional databases are also OK.

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I suspect this type of dataset will have to be constructed from many local sources. Particularly since the 'meaning and access' may vary on culture and environment/conflict.

But for the US/Canada, I would suggest searching on 'food banks' and 'public food pantries'.

USA

Some of the major cities with open data portals have such datasets. Including:

Seattle: https://data.seattle.gov/Community/Food-Banks/ryz5-i54h

Boston: https://data.cityofboston.gov/Health/Food-Pantries-with-Local-Sourcing-Map-View/7ygz-72yc

Westchester County, NY: http://giswww.westchestergov.com/Metadata/wcpantry.htm

Here are agencies that keep online list of their food bank locations:

Second Harvest of Missouri : http://www.ourcommunityfoodbank.org/index.cfm/pageid/207/fuseaction/user.alphaSelect/m/0

Oregon Food Bank: http://www.oregonfoodbank.org/Our-Work/Regional-Food-Bank-Network

Feeding America keeps: http://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank/?_ga=1.223258523.1626167282.1417548401

Food Bank of South Jersey: http://www.foodbanksj.org/FindHelp.html

Food Bank of Alaska: http://www.foodbankofalaska.org/viewPage.php?ID=8

Here's someone's site attempting to (crowd source) collect comparable information across the US:

http://www.foodpantries.org/

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  • Some US food banks/pantris might not quite achieve what Nicholas has asked. The one near me only does distribution every other week, and they have limited refrigerator space, so they likely wouldn't help in the case of someone going on vacation. (unless you managed to time it to arrive just before they were doing a disribution)
    – Joe
    Mar 2, 2015 at 11:35

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