When the massive winter storm hit Texas last week, University of Texas at Austin student Sam Miles noticed that there seemed to be a lot of need expressed on social media that got lost “in the void” because there wasn’t a centralized system for keeping track of requests.
Miles decided to use her large Twitter presence to help: She created a Google Form to track what individuals needed and who could fulfill their requests. What started as an oatmeal drive to give warm breakfast to people on campus and in other parts of Austin grew to include paying for hotel rooms and cooking meals for delivery at a campus co-op one night. Some students even offered their apartments to strangers to help them escape the cold.
Read more from Marissa Martinez with The Texas Tribune here.