Local developers, designers, innovators, social entrepreneurs all gathered together during SCI's first ever 'Tech 4 Social Change' weekend event during the 18th- 19th November, featuring hands-on mentorship and training from Liam Magee, Researcher from University of Western Sydney. 'Tech 4 Social Change' is a means of harnessing diverse skills and efforts in promoting cross collaboration amongst multidisciplinary sectors to experiment with new technologies in advancing social change through Save the Children International's (SCI) programming efforts.
Liam Magee, Senior Research Fellow (Digital Media) from University of Western Sydney and regular hackathon organizer explains, "The aim of these types of events are to start from a small idea or design and work towards developing a 'Minimum Viable Product (MVP)' or prototype within the specified timeframe, in this case- 48 hours. It is also a great way for people to learn about extreme programming, agile development, and participatory design, whilst networking and exchanging skills and experience."
SCI's 'Tech 4 Social Change' event adds a unique feature in that participants must work collaboratively with our local 'Changemakers' - community members who reside in slums and poor urban settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
"By engaging local change makers, it provides the perfect opportunity for programmers, designers, innovators to co-design in developing innovative solutions suitable to the real needs of people, in understanding who the beneficiaries are, and in allowing them to act as user surrogates at all steps of the development and design processes,"Liam added.
During the weekend event, people from multidisciplinary backgrounds formed various teams with the local change makers to begin working on designing solutions to these unique 'problem sets'. Teams worked collaboratively together over the 48 hours with the success of developing several 'Minimum Viable Products'.
They included the development of an android app where people facing natural disasters such as floods, cyclones, or earthquakes could send for help to a disaster dashboard system. The disaster dashboard system acted as a focal point for centralizing all information, data from the last five years and imminent updates during natural disasters. Other teams were able to successfully develop an android app as a way of addressing child migration issues, to ensure safe migration and a dashboard as a response to slum evictions, whereby people could seek immediate assistance and relevant parties would be organizations would be notified.
Sharon Hauser, Director of Programme, Development, and Quality, Save the Children International says, "SCI's Tech 4 Social Change Event fosters participatory processes with community members to ensure that the response or solutions are focused around a human-centered design. By continuing to innovate and draw upon technology as a means for addressing development issues, we are able to have far-reaching implications in impacting the lives of children, families, and communities of where we are working."
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