Meet the 2017 Melbourne Summer Changemakers
We have 8 excited changemakers - a diverse range of social organisations with real business problems.
Come along to our Melbourne Hackathon Nov 25-26 (this weekend!):
Carers’ Couch
Care to Compare?
After her personal journey caring for a friend with cancer, Martina Clark created Carers Couch providing information, education, advice and assistance that increases carer’s capacity and resilience. Many carers just don't get a break; emotional burnout, depression, anxiety and chronic illness are common and impact the overall mortality of carers. Self-care is crucial in preventing this but due to high workload and lack of support. In a role that no one applies for, carers currently lack resources and support that are centralised. Building on her personal experiences as a carer as well as running the current Carers Couch site, Martina hopes that the hack weekend will help her deliver this information and support all in one place.
When Roberto Pietrobon isn’t working in corporate partnerships for the Stroke Foundation he’s working on his project ‘Care to Compare’. The project aims to provide online health insurance comparisons that capture the profits of health insurance referrals to provide funding to health charities. Having already hacked with RHoK in June, as well as work ongoing work since, Roberto is excited for both UXers and backend developers who might be interested in helping to realise the Care to Compare concept.
Berry Street
Hitnet
Child and family services organisation Berry Street is a seasoned RHoK changemaker who is building a system to connect young people within the child support/welfare idk system with a an easy way to visualise their network of family and friends - a group that cannot be easily understood in a conventional genogram. Jennifer McConachy’s Family Finding team at Berry Street also need this solution to allow social workers to easily record this complex and sensitive information in an easy way. Currently, the team is looking to develop this easy-to-use interface.
From remote to metropolitan marginalised communities, Hitnet provides over 70 digital community hubs with over 70,000 uses per year. These hubs enable access to health and social information along with other digital content and communications accessible online and offline. The content is also distributed via the web and via downloadable, offline capable web apps to mobile devices. CEO Julie Gibson has worked to develop Hitnet from a university project into a social business. They are looking for to develop a content delivery network and interface able to cope with the complexity of the organisation and services continuing to grow and diversify in Australia and beyond.
mAdapt
Start Broadband
Beccah Bartlett’s mAdapt is another returning Changemaker. Shifra, her organisation’s online health platform for refugee and migrant women, is in its first iteration. It has a focus on delivering location-based access and information to reproductive and family health in the women’s first language. At the same time, the plan is to leverage the platform’s user analytics to identify trends and gaps in services to the providers. Initially servicing Arabic speakers in north-west Melbourne, Beccah is working hard to scale the platform dramatically in the future. From a technical perspective, the first iteration of the Shifra platform utilises a React, JS front-end with Segment and Postgres on the backend. At this hack weekend Beccah would like help with a Content Management System and support around developing backend system capable of capturing meaningful (GIS) spatial analytics reflecting user trends (i.e. information needs).
Start are a broadband provider that puts a direct a share of every customer bill towards helping fund the home internet connection of disadvantaged Aussie families. This enables access for kids to online homework and gives parents access essential services like government sites and job searches. As a result the team have provided over 5,000 days of free broadband to families in need. At the hack weekend, Start Broadband MD Andrew Whelan would like help developing a customer address validation (qualification) tool that will give broadband availability information, personalised details on the NBN roll-out and honest estimates of achievable speeds further informed by a user feedback loop.
Go Jane Give
PollyannaR
With increases in philanthropy among the wealthy, Go Jane Give aims to provide the opportunity for everyone to use their skills and passions to organise in their own campaigns in support of global and local causes. Go Jane Give have facilitated increasingly high profile campaigns, particularly #Read4Refugees which was supported by individuals from kids to New York Times bestselling authors. Go Jane Give’s Josie Lauristen Lee wants functionality to support the growing demand of these campaigns. There are three possible areas of focus that Josie has identified. First, they would like to be able to run highly interactive, sharable annual campaign pages for a recurring cause. Second, they would like to make it easier and more functional ways for their users to promote the causes that matter to them. Thirdly, they would like the option for ‘shops’ that users can create to sell their artwork etc. to support their campaign.
Regional Victorian artist and activist PollyannaR is committed to seeing community arts to flourish in Gippsland. From creating the world’s longest photograph to garnering support for marriage equality in regional Victoria, her work is diverse. She has big dreams of extending her work to supporting and mentor creatives in the form of an app. From ideas, to grants to reality, she hopes that the result can empower people with untapped creative energy. She’s looking for keen hackers to help convert these complex problems into a usable MVP app. There’s a lot that can be achieved in this project and we can’t wait to see this dream become reality.