Fueled by a fridge full of Red Bull and armed with a wealth of ideas, about two-dozen young coders are trying to solve the technology troubles of three Toronto charities, all within only 24 hours.

The Social Good Hackathon kicked off Friday morning at Ryerson University’s Sandbox work space in what was formerly called the school’s Digital Media Zone.

“These charities are often very lean,” said Stanley Rao, who chairs tech company Capgemini’s Millennium Innovation Council, one of the hackathon’s sponsors.

“They often don’t have dedicated IT departments and they can’t afford to hire consultants.”

That’s where the hackathon’s coders come in. Many are young or just starting out in the coding and web development world. They’re full of ideas that local charities can use to help solve problems like glitch-riddled websites or poor online engagement. In exchange for solutions, the coders get the opportunity to network, show off their talents and possibly find jobs, Rao explained.

The event runs like a competition. The coders are all split into teams, and each team tackles the tech troubles from one of three Toronto charities: Eva’s Initiative for Homeless Youth, Pledges for Change and hEr VOLUTION.

Each team gets 24 hours to come up with a solution to a technology problem presented by the charities. The results are judged by the charities on Saturday, and the winning teams get chosen to work on actually implementing their ideas.

As Eva’s marketing director Andrea Gunraj explained, her organization has been struggling with two main problems.

“As a non-profit, technology isn’t our forte,” Gunraj said. “It’s just not our jam, usually.”

Eva’s runs a number of emergency shelters and programs for youth across Toronto. But when you Google the organization, the only location result that shows up is for their administration office, which doesn’t include a shelter.

Gunraj said they often get homeless youth showing up looking for a safe place to spend the night, only to be told they have to trek back across the city to one of the actual shelters.

“Sometimes it’ll be 6 p.m. and it’s freezing outside. It’s an extra risk for them and a stress for them,” she said.

“Young people really do suffer even from things like bad Google results.”

The other challenge Eva’s is facing is a klunky online donation portal.

“It asks people all the wrong questions, and it also just looks rough,” Gunraj said.

When people try to donate, they get bogged down in a complicated user interface and give up, she said.

Turns out, the solution to the first problem is simple, at least for coders.

“We have a digital marketer on our team who can solve that problem pretty much right away,” said Mia Salaveria, one of the young coders whose team is working on Eva’s challenges.

Salaveria is a graduate of RED Academy’s coding and web design program, and a strong member of her team for the hackathon.

By noon on Friday her team had already hacked out a few potential solutions to Eva’s online donation issue. The mostly viable one given the 24-hour window is to repurpose an existing online payment platform and tweak it to suit Eva’s specific needs, she said.

Apparently that’s relatively straight forward as well, at least if you speak languages like SQL or Javascript fluently.

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For a non-profit like Eva’s that’s necessarily more focused on helping Toronto’s at-risk youth, it’s still a solution that would likely have remained out of reach without the hackathon, Gunraj said.

Even given the tight 24 hour time limit Salaveria said her team was confident they’ll hit the deadline with time to spare.

“I think we can definitely do it,” she said. We’ve got a good group of people and I’m pretty confident in our team.”

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