12. March 2021.

The challenge for this project was proposed by the Munich City District Youth Association (Kreisjugendring München-Stadt, KJR), which approached us through the M:UniverCity innovation network.

Organizations like the KJR currently lack digital communication tools for its youth. In many youth organizations, young people typically participate in processes that involve discussion, voting, and information sharing in person at local youth centers under the supervision of group leaders. However, the onset of the Corona pandemic drastically curtailed these activities, preventing young people from engaging on a regular basis. With this in mind, the Challenge was formulated in an open-ended manner for the student teams: The Future of Youth Involvement: How to better engage young people?

With support from the Strascheg Centre for Entrepreneurship and Amazon Web Services as a DTLab partner, the students developed three different prototypes:

• An app that allows young people to chat, vote and share information in digital form.
• An app that allows young people to find their perfect event or activity by swiping (as in the dating app 'Tinder')
• An app designed to encourage young people to get involved in civic issues on a local and global level

The Challenge was conducted as a virtual challenge with HM's international partner universities as part of the GlobalXChanges/Challenges project, which is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The full report on the Challenge can be found here.