Reinventing Jewish SD Hackathon Winners 2017!
Tarbuton hosted through it’s program Startup18 the Jewish Community Hackathon on Sunday May 8. The program was made possible by a grant from the Covenant Foundation and facilitated by Upstart.
It was an inspiring celebration of Jewish entrepreneurship in San Diego! We kicked off the day with 18 video pitches and an additional six live pitches, for a total of 24 project founders and ideas!
You can see the video pitches here.
Participants formed teams around their chosen project leaders, and ultimately we had 13 teams collaborating and pitching in the finals. The day was a fast-paced design sprint in which participants chose user personas based on interviews with community members, framed challenges, imagined radical ideas to address the user need, and ultimately prototyped and tested their solutions.
The winning ideas selected by judges to receive seed funding and participate in the Idea Acceleration phase were:
- Makom Community: an intentional Jewish community led by Danielle Rugoff, who successfully launched a similar community in Dallas
- Wow in 60: engaging videos geared toward Jewish teens, spearheaded by Rabbi Daniel Bortz ( https://www.facebook.com/rabbibortz/ )
- Kesher Kef: an after school Jewish enrichment program directed by Orli Moses ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/797322513654789/ )
Through a matching grant from the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation, Tarbuton also offered two additional seed grants, which were distributed based on a popular vote. The winners were:
- The Butterfly Project Now: the next phase of the Butterfly Project, focused on training a network of public school educators to scale the program founded by Cheryl Rattner Price on Holocaust education ( http://www.thebutterflyprojectnow.org/ )
- End the Fear: an initiative to gather data and increase reporting around anti-Semitic incidents and BDS on college campuses, led by Sam Litvin
Each of the 5 winners will receive prizes of $2500 and professional development and coaching from Upstart in an idea acceleration phase of the program.
An example of an incredible intersection between our joint work with the Hackathon and with IAC Eitanim appears below.
One of our Eitanim students in SanDiego attended this event for adults and helped the team End the Fear focused on anti semitism and BDS on college campuses win one of 5 $2500 prizes. You can see picture of Dekel and Sam and their team here.
Startup18 cultivated these project ideas and founders through newly launched Jewish Engagement Lab which meets monthly and Idea Round Tables. The Hackathon brought together project founders, community member joiners and advisors into spirited teams.
San Diego Israel and Jewish 