Hacking for Henry Street
By Chelsea Jupin
Above: Henry Street Settlement team members at the Beyond Hackathon. Photo by Andrew Shanley.
What can you do in 24 hours? If you’re the team at Beyond, a design and technology company, you can offer technology solutions for Henry Street Settlement!
Henry Street was the lucky guest of honor at of the company’s latest Hackathon. With talent, determination and, of course, pizza, tech-savvy participants, both from Beyond and elsewhere throughout the city, spend 24 hours brainstorming and then building applications and other digital experiences.
This year’s Hackathon participants worked on eight possible projects for Henry Street, resulting in two finalists that will move forward:
– A gift registry system so that we can streamline our annual Joy Drive, which allows donors to give holiday gifts to our participants
– An app for the new Lower East Side Youth Opportunity Hub that will allow the youth participants to find resources across Hub partners and secondary partners, as well as a backend that will streamline administrative efforts for Hub staff
After the Hackathon, participants presented their findings along with the length of time needed to produce these projects. Present at the Hackathon was Henry Street’s Deputy Development Officer for Public Policy and External Relations Jeremy Reiss, Advocacy and Community Engagement Coordinator Talia DeRogatis, and Deputy Program Officer for Youth Services and Workforce Development Matthew Phifer. Reiss said of the event “We’re grateful to Beyond for taking the initiative to organize a Hackathon to support Henry Street Settlement. We’re very excited about the work which was accomplished during the event, and we look forward to continuing to work with the teams to develop technological innovations to support our programs.”
