An Integration Hackathon organised by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia in co-operation with the British Council Latvia took place from 18 to 19 October 2018 in K.K. fon Stricka villa, Rīga.
During the two-day event, 33 participants of different backgrounds, ethnic origins from various NGOs of Latvia gathered to find confederates and create a new solution for an issue or a new project. Initially, there were 13 ideas put forward and authors of five ideas were capable to convince jury of their ideas and create teams for further development. To encourage participants to develop more unique and viable projects, there were mentors, professionals from different fields: Vita Brakovska, Signe Adamoviča, Anita Zorgenfreija and Gunārs Klēģers, who actively shared their experience and motivated participants to choose more useful directions of thinking for their project ideas.
At the end of the event, all five teams presented their projects to the jury composed of people from public administration, non-governmental institutions. The main prize, 10 000 Euros went to developers of a mobile application “Co-operly” that promoted opportunities to meet and to co-operate for people of different cultures. The mobile application will serve as an opportunity for people to make their own content, to create events, activities, entertainment offers, as well as to use this application to meet other people, thinking the same way or not, to familiarise themselves with and find out new things about other cultures and traditions.