As SNAP benefits stalled, a Massachusetts teen stepped up with a digital lifeline: MySnapMap

As families scrambled to get food on the table when SNAP benefits were withheld during the government shutdown, a teenager in the suburbs of Boston stepped in with an innovative new tool: a map.

Seventeen-year-old Sami Juma of Wellesley created MySnapMap, an online guide to restaurants and small businesses offering free or heavily discounted meals. Now, even with the federal government back up and running after the longest shutdown in American history, the issue of food insecurity isn’t any less acute. For many, the fight to end hunger is far from over.

That’s why this week’s edition of the Joy Beat is celebrating Sami’s work. He joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share how he turned an idea into a lifeline. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Arun Rath: Sami, tell us about the spark that ignited MySnapMap. Where’d you get the idea?

Sami Juma: Yeah, so I was scrolling on Instagram a couple of weekends ago, and I kept coming across these posts from small businesses where they’re offering either completely free or discounted meals to SNAP recipients.

I was quite blown away by this generosity — like, these are people who have to pay their own bills, and yet they’re stepping up for their own community. I thought that was truly incredible.

And it wasn’t a one-off. I kept scrolling, kept seeing more businesses — not just in Massachusetts, but across the country — that were offering these free meals and this kind of generosity.

I was thinking, “Wow, this is really incredible.” At the same time, the information isn’t super easy to access if you want to know all the places near you that are offering free meals, so I was like, “Why don’t I just create a tool that can address this issue?”

So, I created MySnapMap.com, which is basically an interactive map, and it shows all the restaurants near you that are offering free or discounted meals.

Rath: Is this something that — with your digital skills and knowledge of coding, were you able to build this from scratch?

Juma: I have a little bit of coding background, but for this project, I relied pretty much entirely on Claude, which is a Large Language Model. It’s similar to ChatGPT, but it’s especially good at coding.

Basically, using that, I was able to whip up the website in a couple of days. Because one of the most important things for me was getting the website out quickly, because, obviously, the issue of SNAP benefits is affecting people every day. Yeah, I greatly relied on Claude, and I basically used that entirely to build the website in a few nights, and then it was up and running.

Rath: Tell us how the app works, exactly. I’m imagining other, sort of, map-based apps. Do you pull up your location?

Juma: Yeah. On the map, there’s a search bar, and you type your location — typically, a city — and the map will bring you to that city. On it, you can see blue points that indicate different restaurants near you that are offering free meals or discounted meals.

Right now, the map covers New England and a few states outside of New England; it covers Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Utah and Arizona. These were just the places where I saw the greatest concentration of restaurants with these offerings.

Also, this was a multi-day effort, so as certain states began to restore SNAP benefits with local funding, I was looking at places where that was not yet happening and trying to target those places to have the greatest impact.

Rath: How did this work with finding the businesses? Did you connect with businesses at all directly, or were you just doing the legwork of finding the ones that were doing this?

Juma: So, I never actually contacted these businesses. But what I would do is I’d go on Facebook, because Facebook and Instagram were where the majority of these posts were. I basically sorted through tons — like tens, almost 100 for each city — of posts from these restaurants. It was very important to me that I got the original source of these offerings, because one of the biggest priorities was making sure that all the information on the site was completely accurate and up-to-date.

Basically, for each city or each state, I would sort through all the official restaurant postings. Sometimes, I would find news articles that had compiled the whole list, and even then, I would go through and verify each one. I basically did that for over 400 restaurants, and that’s really what created MySnapMap.

Rath: Nice work, that’s just brilliantly done!

Juma: I appreciate it.

Rath: Even with the government shutdown ending and SNAP benefits are supposed to be coming back, I feel like there might still be a need for MySnapMap. What are your thoughts about this now going forward?

Juma: A lot of these offers were specifically for the government shutdown, so I’m not sure it will remain completely useful the way it was during the shutdown. But I think it’s still a nice reminder of all the businesses that were stepping up during the shutdown to help their communities.

As I was circulating the website, there were a lot of people who were commenting how they wanted to — even though they could fully afford to pay [for their] meals, they wanted to specifically go to these businesses [that were] lending a hand to the communities because they want to support them.

So, even though it may no longer have the same practical use, I think it’s still a great reminder of which businesses people can go out and support.

Rath: This is a big issue that you’ve taken on at such a young age, and then to have done this successfully — again, it’s just so remarkable. I’m wondering, did you have a background in doing nonprofit work before? Or how did you come together to do this, to not just have the idea but to actually follow it through and make this happen?

Juma: I honestly don’t have much of a background in nonprofit work. It was more … I just enjoy creating things, and this was kind of a really good intersection of my interests of solving a very present problem in my community — not only my community, but across the U.S. — and also, just building something, because I get a lot of satisfaction from that.

So yeah, MySnapMap, I found it honestly very fun to create, and it was even better to know that I was actually helping real people. I was really motivated to spend and dedicate a lot of time on this project and help as many people as I possibly could.

Rath: Again, it’s just warming my heart so much to hear that. It sounds like your motivation in this is the satisfaction of helping people.

Juma: I think it’s really incredible to see how just creating a website from my house in this small town has been able to have an impact on people that I don’t even know. I think that’s really amazing, and that’s what really encouraged me to keep expanding the map.

Every day, I was adding pretty much a new state during the shutdown, and that was really motivating. I was like, “Wow, I can actually help people.” Obviously, I can’t make any legislative changes, but I can do my part in this small way that will still have some impact.

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