Our Story

From one kitchen
to a platform.

A prototype for one community kitchen first.

Five milestones from one Sydney kitchen to a sector platform—tap a step or let the tour run.

2025 — Now

Live pilot

Civium runs in production at Our Big Kitchen—real shifts surface what we fix before others have to trust it.

Meet the Team Early access →

The Journey

How we got here. From kitchen to platform.

"Great technology should serve those who care for our most vulnerable — we have the skills to make that happen." — The founding volunteers

April 2025

01 — The Beginning

The Beginning

Shaina Slavin saw her parents' community kitchen juggling donations, volunteers, and meals with tools that were never meant for that pace. She built a focused prototype for their workflows — enough to prove the idea, not yet enough to carry every organisation alone.

August 2025

02 — The Collaboration

The Collaboration

Volunteer engineers joined to shape something durable: a modular layer that sits on Salesforce and NetSuite instead of replacing them. The work looks like disciplined reviews, shared ownership, and build time most NGOs could not fund as a traditional vendor engagement.

November 2025

03 — The Vision

The Vision

Harish Palagummi widened the lens from a single site to a product other NGOs could adopt: same enterprise platforms underneath, clearer screens for coordinators and volunteers on top. The build stays modular — so each organisation keeps its stack while Civium handles the day-to-day interface work.

Now →

Building toward launch

Building Toward Launch

Still volunteer-led, still anchored to Our Big Kitchen as the operating pilot, and still targeting May 2026. The roadmap is simple: ship what survives real shifts, document what breaks, repeat.

Who's Building It