Oro Hackathon returns to Upper Hutt

Guest post by Paul Thompson of Upper Hutt Community Youth Trust

Guest blog by Paul Thompson of Upper Hutt Community Youth Trust

Why would I want to be involved in a hackathon and give up a whole weekend to help? I mean I’m busy, I have too many things on and too many people that I’m working with already.

Sound familiar? Last year a group of us were privileged to spend six weeks together on the Lifehack Oro programme, working on our own wellbeing, understanding more about ourselves, and ultimately inputting into youth wellbeing projects for our city.

Oro participants in 2016, click on the image to find out more about the programme.

I would have to say the programme has changed a lot about what we do as an organisation and how we do it. It has changed some of our thinking, increased our collaboration with other agencies in our community, and given us tools that we use on a regular basis.

The hackathon weekend was a highlight of the programme for many of us, where we saw some incredible amounts of work happen and existing youth projects in the community get a huge boost in energy and resourcing.

We saw from a weekend together three amazing youth projects have energy put behind them namely: Spearhead Leaders, Kickstart Coffee and Whakamana Tia. These projects are ongoing, and continuing to impact young people in our city. The sense of common purpose, working together for a common cause, and from people of all ages, backgrounds and skillsets was something that was amazing to be a part of during the hackathon weekend.

So we’ve jumped at the chance to be involved in helping to bring another hackathon to Upper Hutt.

Why? Because we fully believe in the power of young people

Why? Because we fully believe in the power of young people (and older people who have a heart for youth wellbeing), getting together to work on projects to make a difference for the future generation of our city. We’ve seen the benefits of this from last years Hackathon, and would love to see more projects for the youth in our city given a boost.

If you’re not sure about what you can offer, or how you could be a part of the weekend please do get in touch! We’d love to have you a part of it. Everyone can input and play a part, and that’s the beauty of the programme.