{"id":41731,"date":"2023-10-20T15:16:05","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/army-of-apps-for-good-including-asylum-seeker-myth-busting-app-launched-at-sydney-hackathon-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:16:05","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:16:05","slug":"army-of-apps-for-good-including-asylum-seeker-myth-busting-app-launched-at-sydney-hackathon-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/army-of-apps-for-good-including-asylum-seeker-myth-busting-app-launched-at-sydney-hackathon-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Army of apps for good including asylum seeker myth-busting app launched at Sydney hackathon – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Over 80 developers, designers, marketers and entrepreneurs gathered in Sydney for a 48-hour hackathon last weekend to launch apps for charities and care organisations.<\/p>\n

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The competition included over $40,000 worth of prizes and a range of high-profile not-for-profit organisations including St Vincent\u2019s de Paul, the Refugee Council of Australia and the Cancer Council, who briefed the hackers about the key issues they were facing in their work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The event was coordinated by developer group Alive Mobile. Mat Ashley, general manager at Alive, told StartupSmart<\/i> the hackathon was designed to bring the power of mobile to life-changing groups.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to prove what can be achieved in such a short time with great and passionate minds working together. It only takes a weekend to change lives, and from a commercial point of view we want to change the world, and this is about making the world work better,\u201d Ashley says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ashley adds many charities have neither the skilled personnel nor the budget to outsource app development, so the event was designed to connect their needs with young talent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An app created for the Benevolent Society took out top prize, which includes further development of the app. The app enabled foster children to track their journey from home to home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cTheir issue was the problems of kids being moved around a lot between foster homes. They wanted to create an app for the kids to connect with other kids on the same journey and feel more connected and control,\u201d Ashley says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ashley says one of the toughest briefs given to the hackers was by the Refugee Council of Australia.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re a very small team and their major issue is approaching the misconceptions Australia has about refugees and asylum seekers. So they were really keen to communicate the stats and facts of what\u2019s actually going on and where these people are coming from,\u201d Ashley says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ashley says the major challenge for the developers was finding an interactive and engaging way to present facts and draw in users who weren\u2019t already on board with pro-refugee campaigns.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDelivering stats and facts in an interesting way is incredibly difficult, as a successful app offers engagement and interaction, so turning the facts from something quite dry into something interesting was tough,\u201d Ashley says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lucy Morgan from the Refugee Council of Australia told StartupSmart<\/i> they were delighted with the app.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about myth-busting and getting the facts out there. We wanted something our supporters could whip out at the pub when they hear a comment about \u2018illegals\u2019 or \u2018queue jumpers\u2019 and bring the facts up quickly, and it was great in that way,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cWe knew people with set opinions and ideas about asylum seekers probably wouldn\u2019t download it, so we wanted to give our supporters a tool to break down the arguments and address them.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Morgan adds many advocacy groups would love to make better use of mobile technology and apps but couldn\u2019t due to the high cost of mobile development.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have the budget for this kind of work even though we\u2019d like to engage with it,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cSo we\u2019re not able to invest in it ourselves, but several members of the group have expressed interest in developing it further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over 80 developers, designers, marketers and entrepreneurs gathered in Sydney for a 48-hour hackathon last weekend to launch apps for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}