Tech nonprofit organisation Empire Partner Foundation recently held a historic hackathon to tackle youth unemployment in the Great Kei Municipality, Eastern Cape.
The two-day youth unemployment coding festival was designed to provide participants with the right mindset, tools, and confidence needed to see, assess and shape opportunities for launching new projects and ventures.
Young software developers were guided through a process of creating solutions to self-defined problems in an agile method, where testing the problems and validating solutions were crucial.
Empire Partner Foundation has taken a leading role in tackling youth unemployment through hackathons.
The non-profit organisation has in the last 18 months been preparing youths for employment by supporting them to become self-employed or even growing their businesses to create jobs for others.
The organisation has since 2016 been working with young software developers with scalable ideas to create new solutions using technology that impact social change and increase sustainability.
The foundation’s model is based on focusing, and selecting young software developers with the most promising tech business ideas that are scalable.
With this strategy, Empire Foundation is impacting the young and stimulating youths to tackle socio-economic challenges affecting communities.
The best business ideas and participants will be enrolled in the Empire Foundation business incubator, before being paced in the business accelerator program.
“The Great Kei Unemployment Hackathon served as a historical milestone for us at Empire Partner Foundation: 18 months and 18 hackathons, EPF has journeyed in hosting hackathons from 100% physical to hybrid and now for the first time 100% virtual,” says Jasmine Mokwena, marketing and hackathon coordinator at Empire Foundation.
