Philly Hackathon: Kalimah Priforce, co-founder of Qeyno Labs and hackathon organizer, talks to youth Trailblazers about their pitches. Photos by Monica Peters.

Team Change Your Community worked feverishly in a computer lab at String Theory Charter School in Philadelphia last weekend to create an app for community good.

The youths tossed out problems, ideas for solving them, and narrowed down their options to one. Then, they got to work coding.  The result: an app that allows users to take pictures of abandoned buildings and nominate them for how they should be renovated or used.

Their project took first place during the event, the first hackathon for the White House initiative My Brother’s Keeper. Team members took home Samsung Galaxy tablets and a chance to participate in a Google Hangout with #YesWeCode founder Van Jones, the hackathon’s keynote speaker. The real prize, however, is that the hackathon, held Nov. 14-16, is a step toward guiding the 95 boys and girls who participated on a trajectory to careers in technology.

“Whenever young people start to break negative patterns and start a new positive pattern you have no idea what that’s going to mean for history,” Jones said.

#YesWeCode and Qeyno Labs organized the hackathon to help address the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley and the technology industry. The students from Philadelphia and around the country built apps to solve problems in their neighborhoods. Eighty-five mentors, including professionals from non-technical fields, developers and designers, provided guidance as the youth built their apps.    

 “It’s the idea of taking [President] Obama’s call to action and connecting that to what happens in Silicon Valley everyday, which is building apps that could change the world,” said Kalimah Priforce, the hackathon’s organizer and a White House Champion of Change.

My Brother’s Keeper, which the White House announced earlier this year, seeks to empower boys and young men of color who face difficult life circumstances to reach their full potential. The initiative is supported by a coalition of businesses, community leaders, nonprofits and private philanthropies, including Knight Foundation.  

Van Jones, Founder of #YesWeCode talks to Trailblazers at hackathon.   

Michelle Martin, of Urban Youth Racing School, Omoju Miller, of Google, William Crowder, of Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, and Donna Frisby-Greenwood, Knight Foundation’s Philadelphia program director.  

Donna Frisby-Greenwood, Knight’s program director in Philadelphia, served as a judge, a natural extension, she said, of the foundation’s support for programs that expand opportunity.

“It fits into the work we’re doing to get more women and people of color in the pipeline to become tech entrepreneurs,” said Frisby-Greenwood, adding that the foundation’s work includes support for other programs, such as Urban Apps and Maps at Temple University, CODE2040 and Girls Who Code. 

 The hackathon was also sponsored by Google, MSNBC and Essence Magazine. Youth ages 13-20 pitched their app ideas, formed teams, brainstormed and then developed their apps. The hackathon focused on five tracks: education, restorative justice, food and sustainability, health and wellness and masculinity.  Participating youth, referred to as trailblazers, also had to think of strategies for how their products would generate revenue.  Each team spent about 54 hours taking their idea from concept to demo. 

 “I was impressed with how far they got with their projects,” in such a short period, said Frisby-Greenwood said. Other judges included Michelle Martin of the Urban Youth Racing School, a Knight grantee, Omoju Miller, of Google, and William Crowder, of Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund.

Although the My Brother’s Keeper initiative targets boys, Priforce, co-founder of Qeyno Labs, decided early on to include girls. He partnered with the Urban Tech Alliance, which provides mentoring for youth interested in STEM, to have a My Sister’s Keeper arm, which recruited girls to participate and provided mentoring.

My Sister’s Keeper participant Angelica Flowers, 17, was on team Game School, which took second place; members received $100 gift cards and Google Hangout time with Jones. Her team, comprised of boys and girls, built an app that teaches kids coding through playing games. Flowers, an aspiring writer, had no prior coding skills.

“There are a lot of girls out there that can do technology just as much as boys,” Flowers said.

Flower’s cousin, Zachary Dorcinville, 18, inspired her to participate. Dorcinville, a high school senior who aspires to be a software engineer, participated in his first hackathon at the 2014 Essence Festival in New Orleans. Dorcinville’s mother passed away, and Flower’s mother, who is his aunt, is raising him. He ran a successful GoFundMe campaign to attend the New Orleans hackathon with his family. He was impressed by the outcome at the My Brother’s Keeper hackathon in Philadelphia. 

“The aspect I enjoyed the most was seeing everybody’s good ideas come to life, seeing everybody go up there and present their ideas with so much passion and integrity,” Dorcinville said. 

His team, Recupery, built an app that offers free mental health services for kids in crisis by connecting them immediately to a counselor. The app won the Best Impact Award during the hackathon.

BMe Community Managing Director Benjamin Evans said bringing the community together to cultivate diversity in the tech industry is necessary to create change. BMe, a now-independent initiative started by Knight Foundation, is a social network for building more caring and prosperous communities inspired by Black men.

 “We thought it important to partner with #YesWeCode, Qeyno Labs and My Brother’s Keeper because we all serve the purpose of recognizing the assets of our communities and recognizing the black men who are building up our communities,” Evans said.  “The youth are the assets and untapped assets for solving these problems.”

Team CYC: “Change Your Community” took first place at My Brother’s Keeper Hackathon in Philadelphia.