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about 3 years ago

T-24 Hours: Welcome, Extended Timelines & an Update on Our Hackathon!

Hiya Folks,

Sending this note to the 140+ folks registered so far for the third edition of the Climate Change-Makers Challenge: WELCOME, Happy Earth Month & Hope y'all are pumped to get started!!

And an update... After chatting with our partners, some of our participating youth & internal team, we've been finalizing our plans for the challenge. And here, full disclosure that it's been a challenging time the last few months, with some key staff transitioning roles, exam season for some of our university-based team & folks like me just coming back from travels. As such, we've been working on the hackathon but at reduced capacity the last bit & after talking options, we've decided to keep our start this weekend (SO excited) but extend timelines/ due dates for the challenge, with workshops spread over three weeks.

Here's some specifics on NEXT STEPS, including schedules & action items:

• Open Conversation on Eco-Anxiety: Our kick-off will be an open convo on eco-anxiety on April 28th @ 1 PM EST, as part of the Youth Impact Challenge's "Brave Spaces" series... ALL welcome (even if not doing he challenge, bring your friends), register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brave-spaces-climate-anxiety-lets-talk-about-it-tickets-619306019977 *
• Team-Making Session + Other Events this Weekend: From here, we'll have LOTS of workshops/ for-fun events/ mentorship opportunities, including a bunch this weekend, including:
  • April 29 @ 10 AM EST: Introductions to challenge + Team-making workshop + Going through some key logistics, strongly recommended to attend (will do a repeat on May 13)
  • April 29 @ 3 PM EST: Individual mentorship sessions with Lia Renauld (LinkedIn here) & me (LinkedIn here)... There will be a process to book these calls that we'll go through later*
  • April 29 @ 8 PM EST: Movie night, featuring Girls for the Future and their Fight for the Global Climate Crisis (SUPER-inspirational), with a brief discussion to follow as well*
  • April 30 @ 10 AM EST: Ideation workshop, talking about how to come up with an idea you might be passionate about... Super-relevant to folks, strongly recommended!*
  • April 30 @ 3 PM EST: Open group office hours... Do you have questions for the team?
  • April 30 @ 8 PM EST: Game night & an eco-quiz to close off our first weekend (with prizes)!
• Plus LOTS More in Future Weekends: From here, we'll aim to have a couple sessions (including some repeats for folks from different time zones) in the following weekends, with the core of our programming in the May 13-21 range, with participants asked to register on Devpost no later than May 12 if wanting to participate in our challenge (feel free to invite friends if eligible).
• Deadline & Finale Dates: From here, we will have submissions being due on May 23rd, have judges review Round 1 submissions the week after & invite our top-scoring teams in Round 1 for a FINALE event on June 4 @ 10 AM EST (just in time for World Environment Day!)

So, bottom line is that there's a lot going on, with everything optional but lots of opportunities to add to your knowledge + connections, with competition secondary... For us, this hackathon is an opportunity to be create a community of incredible eco-actors working together to address the biggest existential crisis of our time. And on this note, up to 5 BONUS POINTS will be available to teams who have at least one team member attend any of starred workshops (look for the "*"), and with so many opportunities, we encourage folks to check them out. We really are excited to have people ALL over the world joining us :)

Final notes that Slack + Zoom links will be available first thing tomorrow (note that our organizing team is mostly in Canada & hence will share times in EST, although we will have events at different time zones to be accessible to peeps across the world)... And am also in the process of getting through e-mails from folks with more specific questions, just catching up as I get back to things here.

Our last two editions of the challenge were some of the most inspiring events I've been a part of, thanks to the energy + innovation + resilience of our youth participants like all of you. Cannot wait to work with you great folks over this weekend.... SO excited & chat with all of you soon!!

Many thanks & kind regards,

Shitangshu

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