Helping Youth Shelters through a Hackathon
Let’s take a little throwback to May, when Junction organized Solve the SDGs hackathon together with Aalto Ventures Program and Aalto University:
Even before the coronavirus crippled the world, we’ve been facing severe challenges regarding the well-being of the planet, ecosystem and humanity. Many of these challenges have been codified by the UN into Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.
Solve the SDGs is a hackathon where we focus on solving these challenges. It’s a hackathon for people, who want to make a difference. For people, who don’t want to watch the world burn, but to save it.
Here’s Finnish Red Cross’ Youth Shelters’ and Accenture’ take on the event:
Could there be an “one-stop-shop” platform for the ones in need of help?
Finnish Red Cross’ Youth Shelters combined forces with Accenture to create a challenge on how to essentially better serve the youth — whether it be in the shelters or online, and whether it is the youth themselves or their close ones who are in need of help.
The challenge tackled the SDG no 10 — Reduce inequality within and among countries.
“We wanted the participants to create a client platform that serves as a “one-stop-shop” where young people and their close ones can access all support and related information easily throughout their customer journey.
Solve the SDGs was the first time the Finnish Red Cross’ Youth Shelters took part in a hackathon of any sort, but surely won’t be the last.”
The need for the solution rose when Youth Shelters had to quickly develop their digital solutions in the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was built from small separate parts.
“We at Red Cross now needed a big entity where all the functions are somehow in one place. We see that it is important to have easy access to support and uninterrupted access to digital support.”
Becoming better at helping people by creating technological solutions
The hackathon was a great experience, as the Red Cross got to learn how to look at things better from the users’ perspective, from people in different fields.
“We know how to help but making technological solutions is not our strength. The participants were students and some of them same age as the Youth shelters’ clients so the understanding from the perspective of the young people came to the fore.”
From Accenture’s POV, hackathons are an excellent way to get fresh, out-of-the-box ideas and concepts very quickly. Sometimes, you’re simply too close to the problem and stuck in “business as usual” way of thinking. But in hackathons, participants get to view the challenges with fresh eyes, with no limitations on “how things have always been”, organizational boundaries or existing technical solutions.
During the short and oh-so-intensive weekend, teams can actually develop solutions that would normally take weeks or months, when developed as part of other every-day tasks. Aalto University students and other participants also represent a wide range of different fields of studies, from business to design and engineering to computing, bringing new skills to solve some of the challenges.
The role of mentors
“As mentors, we mostly supported teams with validating their initial ideas and concepts. It was great to see, how teams really made an effort to understand the environment in which the Youth Shelters operate, current services and the various needs of young people and their close ones. We had discussions related to different functionalities and features.
What we highlighted to all, was the importance of connecting different services together, to create end-to-end customer journeys.
In any future hackathons, our message to all participants is to seek for support, feedback and mentoring even more, to build a fast feedback-loop and iterate several times during the hackathon.”
What’s next?
“We have involved experts in the digital development of the Red Cross Youth Shelters. Our goal is to create new digital activities and accessible services to meet and help young people and their families throughout Finland. Hopefully, this hackathon opened up new possibilities and future collaboration both for the students and the Finnish Red Cross.
For Accenture, we also view these events as recruitment opportunities as we get to see how people work in teams and under pressure.“
Hopefully, this has inspired some to consider Accenture as a future employer. Accenture’s open positions and internship opportunities can be seen on their careers page.
The projects built during the hackathon can be seen on Junction App.
