Techfugees Australia help develop effective solutions to the issues facing refugees settled in Australia.

Techfugees was founded in 2015 to bring the tech start-up and NGO communities together with refugees settling into a new life in Australia. Our community of 'Hackers, Hipsters, Hustlers and Humanitarians' has grown to many Hackathons and meetups in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. At our events, businesses have been founded, skills learned and friendships made. The model developed in Australia to ‘co-design’ solutions with refugees is now used in the growing global Techfugees movement.

If you’ve never been to a Techfugees event, you’re in for an extraordinary weekend working alongside some of Australia’s most talented and committed tech stars, mentors, designers, business leaders and community people together with newly arrived and settled refugees.

We come together with one objective: to build a community of like-minded people who roll up their sleeves and develop solutions to the challenges faced by refugees when they come to Australia.

Techfugees is now a huge global movement with 15,000 members and dozens of chapters around the world. In Australia, many of the solutions developed at our events are now operating as tech start-ups or social ventures in their own right. This means our weekend events have a lasting positive impact.

And you can be part of it!

View full rules

Prizes

$11,000 in prizes

First Prize

$10,000 cash from SSI + Academy Xi Credit of $,4,000 and $100 Academy Xi boot camp for every team member, $2000 AWS credits

All Winning Teams
Mentoring by Annie Luu, Investible; Ryan Cross, Crosshatch Solutions and Usman Iftikhar, Catalysr

Second Prize

$1,000 cash Transferwise, + Academy Xi Credit of $,2,500 credit and $100 Academy Xi boot camp for every team member, $1000 AWS credits

All Winning Teams
Mentoring by Annie Luu, Investible; Ryan Cross, Crosshatch Solutions and Usman Iftikhar, Catalysr

Third Prize

Academy Xi Credit of $1,500 credit and $100 Academy Xi boot camp for every team member, $500 AWS credits

All Winning Teams
Mentoring by Annie Luu, Investible; Ryan Cross, Crosshatch Solutions and Usman Iftikhar, Catalysr

Honorable Mention (2)

All Winning Teams
Mentoring by Annie Luu, Investible; Ryan Cross, Crosshatch Solutions and Usman Iftikhar, Catalysr

Eligibility

We will focus specifically on hacking the challenges faced by refugees. 

We need Hackers, Hipsters Hustlers and Humanitarians to form teams, as well as mentors to help the teams!

Register to participate.

Requirements

TBD

How to enter

Pre-register on Eventbrite.

Judges

Hon Ed Husic

Hon Ed Husic
MP

Astrid Perry

Astrid Perry

Jamila Gordon

Jamila Gordon

Jasmina Bajraktarevic-Hayward

Jasmina Bajraktarevic-Hayward

Charbel Zeaitor

Charbel Zeaitor

Peter Huynh

Peter Huynh

Judging Criteria

  • Product/Market Fit
    Who is your customer (Refugee/Service Organisation etc)? How well does the product fit the needs of the problem the team chose to tackle? How user-friendly is the technology? Is it a complete solution, or do they still have a long way to go?
  • Potential Impact
    How much impact (quality and quantity) could the solution have?
  • Creativity/Innovation/Wow Factor
    How innovative/creative/unique is the hack? Does the hack employ a new/novel approach to solving the problem?
  • Feasibility & Sustainability
    What are your barriers to entry or user adoption? How are you addressing those challenges? What is your rollout strategy? Is it scalable and self-sustaining?
  • Accomplishment & Learning
    How much did they accomplish in the weekend? Did they demonstrate learning from mentors to help inform a better solution? Did the demo test core assumptions?
  • Team Pitch
    How well did the team explain their solution? How well did the demo communicate the idea?