The Hackathon Event 2022 was funded and supported by the Reconnect Programme. Reconnect is a one-year scheme that was introduced by Kent County Council to help reverse the effects of COVID and self-isolation, especially in young people.
The aim of the Hackathon was to find solutions to the problem of a decrease in overall wellbeing in young people at schools across Kent. Nine groups of young people (aged 5-17 years old) were asked to come up with ideas that would improve mental and physical well-being within their schools and local community and present these to a judging panel with real funds at stake to implement their ideas and turn them into reality.
To introduce the importance of looking after your emotional well-being and mental health, Kelly Hannaghan (Mental Health and Welling Consultant) gave an engaging speech to all the teams and pupils. This included some mental well-being exercises and analogies that young people could use in everyday life. This was extremely eye opening to listen to and engage with. Daniel Bromley, from Kent Sport, also gave a very active speech about the importance of physical health. He presented a quiz to highlight the extreme consequences that COVID had on young people’s physical health using statistics. This seemed to be very surprising to the young people and through discussion, they all agreed that something had to change. These ideas definitely stuck with the young people as many of the final ideas they pitched included the importance of physical activity and aimed to incorporate this into activities at their school.
The judges for the event were from the Participation Team - Amy, Ellie and Kayleigh who were partnered with a senior member of Kent County Council staff at the event. The children all pitched brilliant ideas including apps, swimming pool refurbishment, new equipment in schools and extra-curricular activities. This made judging really challenging as all the ideas were so good!
At the end of the day, there were three winners who won £1000 each for their school and runners up won £750 for their school. This made all participants excited as they were able to make their ideas a reality. That was very rewarding to see.
Views of Participation Team Apprentices Ellie and Amy
As this was our first event with young people, it was really eye opening to see how everyone including the young people bounced off each other and worked together collaboratively. Added to this, observing the young people when they were brain storming ideas was very pleasant to witness and it made our job on the day very rewarding.
