FoodBank Ukraine and EPAM Ukraine Transform Food Assistance

During the full-scale war in Ukraine, food security has become a key factor in the country’s resilience. Along with efforts to preserve and develop the food industry, millions of tons of high-quality products that could improve the lives of those in need are wasted in the country every year. The problem of food waste can be solved through the food banking model, enhanced by effective digital solutions. Recently, one such solution was launched in Ukraine thanks to the efforts of EPAM IT volunteers.

Foodbanking is a system of responsible food redistribution that allows you to save products from destruction and transfer them to those who need it most. These are products that have lost commercial value due to a short shelf life, packaging changes, or product updates, but remain certified and suitable for consumption. In 2025 alone, the non-profit organization FoodBank Ukraine saved and donated more than 4.5 million kilograms of products to charity. This is almost 10 million portions of food for more than 1.4 million people from frontline areas.

This approach simultaneously solves not only social but also environmental problems. After all, when products end up in landfills, they become a source of methane emissions, one of the most dangerous greenhouse gases. Reducing food losses is a priority in global environmental policy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Digital transformation of the humanitarian sector

With the outbreak of the Great War, the humanitarian sector faced new challenges: the number of organizations requiring coordination increased, logistics became more complex, and the need for transparency in processes grew. One of the key elements of FoodBank Ukraine's work is the warehouse infrastructure. Here, large batches of products are received from businesses, checked, sorted, and packaged before further distribution to communities. The warehouse enables prompt emergency response, ensures proper product storage conditions, supports the formation of humanitarian kits, and minimizes resource losses. In fact, it is an operational center on which the speed and efficiency of the entire food aid system depends. As in the commercial sector, the humanitarian warehouse infrastructure requires modern digital tools to manage product flows and coordinate a large number of process participants.

EPAM experts created the Digital FoodBank IT platform, which automates request processing, planning needs, controlling product residues, and coordinating the volume of humanitarian cargo. This increases transparency, efficiency, and scalability of the system, reducing the burden on the fund's operators.

Features of IT development  

14 IT volunteers from EPAM Ukraine were involved in the development at various stages. They worked on the project for about a year, from the discovery phase to the release and testing. Technologically, the solution is completely built on Google Cloud Platform services due to special conditions for charitable organizations. The architecture is optimized so that the current platform's operational costs are minimal for the organization. The server part of the system is built on reactive programming technologies, which ensure high-speed request processing. The work uses cloud infrastructure, where data is reliably encrypted to meet high requirements for protecting confidential information. The system also contains built-in machine learning algorithms for automatic documentation processing. The client-side of the interface is optimized for fast page rendering and convenient user interaction with data. In contrast, the interface and server processes are deployed on separate, independent nodes in the cloud. The partners plan to continue optimizing the solution by adding new features to ensure the system's sustainability.

This collaboration is an example of how volunteer initiative and modern technologies help overcome the challenge of food security in the country.

FoodBank Ukraine was established in 2011 to implement the international food bank model. During this time, the organization has grown from a local initiative to a national coordination center that unites businesses, charitable foundations, public organizations, logistics partners, and communities.

Today, the FoodBank Ukraine network includes more than 120 charitable and public organizations in 20 regions of the country. Through this system, assistance is regularly provided to internally displaced persons, older people, large families, residents of frontline and de-occupied territories, and other Ukrainians in difficult life circumstances.

At the end of 2025, FoodBank won the "Charitable Ukraine" competition in the "Charity in the field of ecology and environmental protection" nomination and entered the TOP-100 ranking of charitable organizations in the country.

ERAM Ukraine is a community of professionals who provide services for digitalizing businesses using cloud technologies and AI. 9350 experts create innovative solutions for foreign customers and contribute to the digitalization of the state. The company is consistently included in the lists of the largest exporters, taxpayers, and most desirable employers, according to various Ukrainian ratings. At the global level, EPAM is included in the Fortune 1000 list of the TOP-15 technology businesses and the list of the 100 fastest growing companies.