High Schoolers Built an AI App to Map Their Neighborhood's Food Deserts

It started as a class project and turned into something their whole neighborhood uses.

A team of four students at a Detroit public high school noticed the same problem their families lived with daily: finding fresh, affordable groceries meant long bus rides past blocks of fast food and corner stores. So they decided to map it.

Using AI-assisted coding tools, the students — none of whom had built an app before — created FreshFinder, a simple mobile-friendly site that shows nearby stores with fresh produce, current prices, and bus routes to reach them.

Learning by building

“We didn’t learn to code first and then build,” explains 16-year-old team lead Aaliyah Johnson. “We had a problem, and AI helped us figure out each step as we went.”

Their teacher, who mentored the project, says that’s the shift worth paying attention to: “These tools collapse the distance between an idea and a working thing. My students stopped asking permission to build.”

That mindset — ideas first, permission never — is one we champion, and it’s central to the workshops we host for the next generation of builders.

Going further

FreshFinder now covers three Detroit ZIP codes and is maintained by a rotating student club. The team has been invited to present at a city council meeting on food access.

“People keep asking who funded it or who built it for us,” Aaliyah says. “Nobody did. We just started.”

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