Each week we interview one of our startup teams that work in the Common Room to learn more about what they’ve been up to.
This week, we caught up with Angela & Liliana from Lustr to find what her team have been working on and beyond.
Each week we interview one of our startup teams that work in the Common Room to learn more about what they’ve been up to.
This week, we caught up with Ace from The Plus Ones to find what his team have been working on and beyond.
Name: Ace
Company: The Plus Ones
Young changemakers step in to co-create a solution to homelessness
NSW has the highest rates of homelessness in the country. A third of homeless resulting from domestic violence and relationship issues, a third resulting from accommodation issues ( including people leaving care) and 22% resulting from financial difficulties.
Vibewire’s #Hack4Homelessness brings Australia’s leading technology, engineering, data and social impact students, social entrepreneurs and startups together to tackle the challenge of homelessness.
Into this mix, we bring:
- Leading experts in the field of homelessness
- People with the shared or lived experience of homelessness
- Local and international leaders seeking to address the myriad challenges that face those dealing with homelessness.
“This is not just a political issue and it can’t be solved in isolation without speaking to people who are or have experienced homelessness. Our hack brings people and organisations together whether you’re in tech development, social policy, finance or architecture. We’re determined to drive change”, says Susan Shi, Executive Director of Vibewire.
“Young people are disproportionately represented in these figures.” explains Susan Shi. “It often starts as couch surfing away from a family conflict before falling into a cycle of homelessness and stressed mental health. We need to refocus on early intervention”.
Big names, real people
You can’t create real solutions at a distance. Vibewire has been co-creating innovative solutions to social challenges for almost two decades, and it has learned that co-creation – working with the people who experience the problem is the fastest way to a lasting solution.
Jewish House came on board early – helping us frame the challenges that we wanted to work on. Telstra Foundation, QBE Insurance and St George Community Housing are sponsoring and providing expertise and support. Our friends at the Minerva Collective will help with data analysis and expertise feeding into the hackathon teams.
Why a hackathon?
“Hackathons and innovation techniques solve massive international challenges every day. There is no reason we can’t take the same approach to the challenge of homelessness – after all, the current approaches are abject failures.”
Today we are calling out for Hackers, Hipsters, Hustlers and Humanitarians to join us for the weekend 15-17 September. People can sign up on our Eventbrite page. Those who register will receive more detailed information over the coming weeks.
Welcome to Good Vibes with Vibewire, your regular dose of the fresh and the fun. The entrepreneur world can be pretty ruthless at times so here are a few positive points to get behind.
+ Podcasts are all the rage right now and keep them coming we say; check out On Being with Krista Tippett and her June 23 episode with Martin Sheen, Spirituality of Imagination, for a thoughtful discussion on faith and his extensive artistic career. Did you know Martin Sheen’s real name is actually Ramon Estevez? Here’s a cute quote from the interview:
“…what we do for a living — that is, artists — is, we live on the energy of our imagination. Our imagination projects us to fulfil our work, and it is the one sure measure of authenticity, is to use your imagination to explore realities.”
+ Fresh film recc with The Big Sick (released in Aussie cinemas from August 3). This heart-warming, cross-cultural tale is already being hailed as one of the best rom-coms of the year and has a 98% ‘fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. With Kumail Nanjiani — who you might recognise from Silicon Valley — as leading man and co-writer, The Big Sick is making a big splash towards greater diversity on our screens.
+ A recently leaked internal Google memo has highlighted some of the glaring inequities that are part of the current tech environment — read this excellent August 6 write up by Ian Bogost on The Atlantic — while it’s a pretty heavy topic, let’s keep the good vibes coming by throwing support behind the women and people from minorities (some of whom are part of the Vibewire community) who are working hard to circumvent the traditional narrative and paving the way for change.
Photograph: Photo by Nicole Rivelli/StudioCanal
This week, we interviewed #PitchTheFuture winner, Laura Loonstein from BuzzyTV. Since winning the pitch competition which was held as part of the Vivid Sydney Festival of Ideas, Laura has ensconced herself in the Common Room co-working space, getting to know the other startups and getting down to the work of serious games.
There is no doubt that our cities are under pressure. From 2006 to 2016, Sydney’s population has risen 18% – from 3.9 million people to 4.7 million. That’s 730,000 new people in a decade. Yet despite 26 years of continuous economic growth, our populations are finding themselves without one of the necessities of life – shelter. Homelessness is an ongoing challenge that we have yet to adequately solve.
New South Wales is not only the economic powerhouse of the country, it also has the highest rates of homelessness. A third of homelessness results from domestic violence and relationship issues, a third results from accommodation issues and 22% of people find themselves homeless due to financial difficulties.
Data from the City of Sydney indicates that young people are disproportionately represented in these figures, with up to 71% of young homeless people sleeping rough, rather than couch surfing or staying in crisis accommodation.
In September, Vibewire is hosting the first of our social impact hackathons for 2017. We are bringing the startup and innovation tools and technologies, design thinking approaches and a commitment to co-design and collaboration to the challenge of homelessness. We call it a “hack4homelessness”. We are taking this approach because we need to break the cycle. We need to get ahead of this growing problem, and we feel we can no longer wait for someone else to solve this problem. We need to act.
Our #Hack4Homelessness will be a weekend where the best and brightest minds work hand-in-hand with people who are, or who have lived with homelessness, and organisations and individuals dedicated to solving this challenge.
But we know we can’t do this alone. We need your help, support and insight. We need your commitment and energy.
You can learn more – and register your interest here.
We aim to help solve the social, technical, cultural and behavioural challenges of homelessness. Put 15-17 September 2017 in your diary and join us to tackle this challenge head-on. Together we can make a difference.