MOF Hacks for Change: A Charity Hackathon | Matter of Form

As an agency, our core mission is to help transform brands through innovation, design and technology. That’s what we do. Creativity is the lifeblood that runs through our agency, in our people, our ideas and our output. And everything we produce is underpinned by our values of good hearted business, shared success, inspired by challenge and exceptional craftsmanship.

We’re all at our happiest when we’re working collaboratively to innovate – and we’re actually pretty passionate about making the world a better place, too. 

So we try and make it a point that a portion of our work carries social impact - we’re proud to work with organisations like GANHRI, Grow Africa, Unicef, World Economic Forum and The Savitri Foundation.

So, when it came to thinking about initiatives for our 2018 CSR programme, we decided to combine our values as an agency and the creative force of our collective hive mind.

Enter: Matter of Form’s first 24 hour charity Hackathon.

We’re partnering with leading charities Unicef UK and Nordoff Robbins to help them with creative solutions to unique challenges that each organisation faces.

So how will this work? Over an intensive 24 hours, our 50-strong team of strategists, designers and coders will be split into four teams and will work through the night prototyping both physical and digital inventions that will aim to make a real difference to real problems posed by both charities.

Matter of Form Charity Hackathon

The Briefs

Unicef UK is one of the world’s largest nonprofits, and a charity that MOF has had the privilege of working with before. Unicef ensures more of the world’s children are protected, educated and vaccinated than any other organisation.

Despite their impressive achievements, the charity faces a couple of challenges in appealing to a wider demographic, and raising awareness of their work.

Anand Modha, Innovation Manager at Unicef UK has set MOF two briefs to tackle.

The first is to effectively engage children with its website. To date, this hasn’t been done successfully, and it’s impacting younger audiences’ ability to build an early and long-lasting affinity with the charity.

The second is to create awareness of ‘silent emergencies’. Unicef UK are looking for solutions to keep humanitarian disasters – such as the ongoing Syria conflict – in the forefront of the public’s consciousness.

Nordoff Robbins is a UK-based charity that uses music to change the lives of vulnerable and isolated people.  

Music therapy can help a child with autism to communicate, unlock forgotten memories for someone living with dementia or provide comfort for someone facing a terminal illness.

They’ve asked us to explore how they could help children develop independence with everyday tasks – like brushing teeth and getting dressed – with apps and music. The second challenge is to help develop confidence and language development via AR and digital tools.

MOF’s Hackathon teams will have access to the best innovation tools – from Samsung Gear VR headsets, arduino circuit boards and a Raspberry PI (a credit card sized computer that is used in a wide array of digital maker projects) – and pizza. Lots of pizza.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter to see how the hackathon unfolds: @matterofform #MOFHackathon

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