Tech Disruptors for Good: Goodie Hack Aims to Transform Communities Worldwide

By leveraging the collective knowledge of the community, attendees gathered to create teams and come up with an idea for an innovative implementation that solves the challenges faced by their choice social enterprise. The participating organizations include: Atlanta Food & Farm, Atlanta HBCU Alliance (5K), Love Beyond Walls, Street Credit, We Cycle Atlanta, MAFDET, Inc. (Make an Awesome Future by Excellence and Thinking), Latino Connection Georgia, Community Guilds (STE(A)M Truck), AIDS Awareness Poets, and Youth Universe. The newly assembled teams bring a disruptive spirit and a wealth of new ideas that also aid in marketing challenges and operational efficiency. The winning team for the summer edition of Goodie Hack is Crime Smarts. It’s an Android app which provides on-demand criminal law resources and crime prevention strategies, based on the founder’s book, to educate and empower youth on civil rights. The Crime Smarts team was created to serve MAFDET, Inc. (represented by Travis Townsend), founded by a group of professionals interested in eliminating the disparity in education, employment, and overall opportunity experienced by lower income individuals and minority youth in America. MAFDET achieves its mission by delivering educational and behavioral development training in four key areas: Criminal law education and crime prevention; S.T.E.M. education; (corporate socialization and etiquette training); and cultural exposure and exploration. The Goodie Hack movement began last quarter with its first event taking place early March. The participating organizations are already reaping the benefits of the program’s success. Mentor Walk, a program supporting the Campus Community Partnership Foundation, had a game created to make learning more fun and connect students to college mentors. Womack also said that in addition to the value received by the participating organizations, Goodie Hack is a rich opportunity for the attendees as it exposes more African Americans to the culture and execution of technology startups, as well as a “day-in-the-life” experience of what it’s like to be a tech entrepreneur. This is particularly impactful given Google’s recent disclosure of alarming statistics about its extreme lack of diversity and minority employees in its organization. Goodie Hack implemented educational segments covering topics such as design thinking, user experience, intellectual property, and private sessions for the non-profit organizations to learn information on how to raise money via crowdfunding platforms like Charitable.org.