Youth Hackathon helping shape Lakelands’ future

The first stage of the Youth Hackathon event – the brainchild of Youth Link, a community stakeholders’ group brought together by Lakelands Estate developer Peet Limited to focus on the area’s young people – saw Lakelands Shopping Centre become a hub of ideas on Saturday 26 May.

The day-long event saw a diverse group of 18 young emerging leaders aged between 10 and 20 years work together to develop and pitch a future-building concept for Lakelands Estate, which will later be funded and implemented.

The group were set the challenge of determining how best to gather opinions of more than 300 young people about how they could make Lakelands Estate a great place to live and grow up.

After a full day of brainstorming and deliberation, the group decided to meet the challenge with a unique solution – a Dog Disco! They believed that the combination of great music and cute canines was likely to attract a large number of participants. Furthermore, the group suggested that these two common interests would unite participants and help break down barriers.

In the afternoon, with help from local not-for-profit The Makers, the group pitched their Dog Disco concept to a panel of community leaders. Makers Chairman, Mandurah Mayor Rhys Williams facilitated the event, and sitting on the judging panel was Deputy Mayor and North Ward Councillor Caroline Knight as well as representatives from Peet Limited and Bendigo Bank (Halls Head).

The panel unanimously supported the proposal and decided $2,000 would be provided to the group to deliver the project.

Peet Managing Director and CEO Brendan Gore said it is a really exciting initiative, and one which Peet is very pleased to support.

“It is important to create channels like Youth Hackathon to give the area’s bright young people a voice in creating a place they’re proud to be part of, as the Lakelands community continues to grow and develop,” said Mr Gore.

Over the next four sessions, the group will prepare and host the Dog Disco event and survey 300 young Lakelands locals under the age of 25. This survey will help inform community planners from the City of Mandurah and Peet Limited on what young people would like to see in their local community.

There was a large amount of community support for the event with Lakelands Shopping Centre providing the event venue free-of-charge, catering provided by local business Sarbas, with the City of Mandurah’s Youth Development team, Lakelands Primary School and Mandurah Baptist College all getting behind the day.