The Social Hackathon

USEFUL FOR
- Managers and volunteer trainers, organisations working with volunteers
- Volunteers and operators in the organisations

TYPE OF TOOL
Co-creation session

DURATION
2 to 3 hours. The duration depends on the intensity of the debate.

MAIN FIELD OF ACTION
Fair Trade
Promotion of Ideas

RELATED SDG
12 - Responsible Consumption and Production

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DESCRIPTION

The term 'hackathon' integrates the concepts of 'marathon' and 'hacker' and comes to define a creative form of problem solving in which a group of people work together to find a solution in a short period of time.

The hackathin is a methodology that can be used as a co-creation tool, whereby different stakeholders (from public, private, and non-profit sectors) work together to break down complex issues into micro-problems to be tackled one oat a time, generating thoughts and potential solutions with the support of a facilitator.

For example, fair trade organisations could organise a social hackathon to cooperatively identify improvements to be made with respect to the recruitment of new volunteers or their training.

Whatever the starting problem to which a solution is to be found through the social hackathon, the procedure to follow is as follows:

• Formulation of the challenge: starting from the available data, the challenge that will be the subject of the co-creation process is clearly defined. The challenge must be clear and concise, concrete and formulated in a language that is accessible to all the people participating in the hackathon.
• Generation of ideas: this is a brainstorming phase that leads to generating a multiplicity of ideas about the challenge. The role of the facilitator is important in fostering the development of ideas by the participants and ensuring the suspension of judgement with respect to the ideas of others.
• Selection and prioritisation of ideas: all previously generated ideas are discussed and prioritised. At the end of this phase participants will have a ranking of ideas.
• Conceptualisation: in this phase, the most promising ideas are made more specific in order to ensure the concreteness of the proposed solutions.
• Finally, the group chooses the solution that appears most convincing in responding to the initial challenge and which can then be tested and implemented on the field.

The role of the facilitator is crucial to the success of the activity.

SUPPORTING MATERIAL

The social hackathon method as a co-creation strategy was developed and implemented by the DECIDO – eviDEnce and Cloud for more InformeD and effective pOlicies Horizon2020 project partners. In the book published at the end of the project - available here - the methodology of the social hackathon is described in detail.