You won’t believe the results from our #HackathonforSRHR!
Ever been persuaded to click on a link, only to read the story and wonder why you ever bothered? This is the manipulation of Clickbait! Clickbait was just one of the many tricks young people use to create engaging digital sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) content at our 3-day Hackathon.
Our #HackathonforSRHR successfully engaged young people to co-create and produce engaging digital SRHR content. In August 2022, we challenged 16 young people to innovate solutions to address gaps in their peers’ SRHR knowledge. The Hackathon provided a collaborative and productive space for young people’s creative freedom to find innovative solutions. Together with our partner Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU), we provided the platform - a relaxing and productive working environment for collaboration - and young people brought limitless creativity to learn, network and improve their digital literacy skills. Daily sessions were structured in highly productive sprints of work, on the spot mentoring and coaching support, and ample time for creative and collaborative thinking with flipcharts, sticky notes and eventually mobile phones, laptops and tablets.
Creativity is a muscle you can flex, and our Hackathon provided participants with a great first workout. As young people produced engaging digital SRHR content, they further developed their digital literacy skills and diverse creative fluency.
Young people carefully considered how their content would live, breathe and be perceived by their audiences. Half of the participants had already been introduced to our digital storytelling approach through our Stories 4 Change: Digital Storytelling for SRHR workshops and excelled in their ability to frame and craft short and engaging powerful digital stories. New participants equally rose to the challenge, experimenting with framing their lived experiences. Crucially, engaging young people in a Hackathon format ensured digital SRHR content was:
Co-designed with and for young people. From dealing with a crush to talking about condom, young people are best positioned to get the content and messaging right and have a real impact on the lives of their peers. Using youth-friendly language, young people are well positioned to help their peers navigate love, sex and relationships.
“I didn’t think it would take so much time and creativity to make something so simple. I loved the experience.”
Regionally-relevant. Creating content that is culturally and socially acceptable is a must. But young people also produced digital content in English and local languages using relevant slang and colloquialisms.
Ensuring medically-verified SRHR information. Every piece of digital content must be medically-verified. As SRHR experts, SafeHands and RHU were able to correct and underscore any inconsistencies on SRHR information with young people as they drafted their scripts.
Creative-confidence. Participants’ largest constraint was not digital skills or tech platforms, but rather underselling their ability to think creatively. Throughout the Hackathon, participants were encouraged and supported to hone their confidence and trust in their own creative abilities from exercises aimed to explore their creative fears, direct facilitator support and creating an enabling environment of trust among participants.
The resulting digital presentations showcase the unique voices of young people, and their powerful stories to improve their peers’ SRHR knowledge and access to information. Later this year, the digital presentations will feature on our Outreach Tablets to improve young people’s SRHR knowledge.
Our #HackathonforSRHR helped co-create digital SRHR information available on our Outreach Tablets, in support of our Knowledge and Information on Safe Sex (KISS) in Fort Portal, Uganda.