Enactus Warwick held a hackathon in collaboration with Warwick Enterprise that aimed at building social enterprises focused on sustainable consumption problems and quality education. This two-day event was held at the Climb, Junction building on the 20th and 21st of January, 2023. The first day focused on identifying the underlying problems in the given topics and broadening the research horizon. Workshops were held on several topics including research, the futures wheel, conducting interviews and formulating surveys.

These workshops were led by Matthew Draycott - Innovation Curriculum developer at Warwick Enterprise, the Innovation Fellows and Warwick Kickstart - the student society partner for the event. Design thinking concepts were an integral part of both days with day 1 focusing on defining and empathising with the problem. Day 2 focussed on ideating and prototyping the solutions the teams created. Day 2 began with a session on generating ideas followed by the Crazy 8’s and Empathy mapping activities. The teams then moved on to building their products and interviewing students and staff across campus to receive feedback on their ideas. A session was conducted on pitching techniques, following which the teams had a chance to pitch their ideas to a panel. The panel consisted of judges from Enactus Warwick, Warwick Enterprise and Warwick Kickstart.

The runners-up team presented an idea around “gamifying” reading to increase knowledge consumption and curriculum understanding among students. This app focussed on incorporating the current syllabus from tutors and creating a reader community for collaboration and an increase in productive reading. The winning team created a solution to turn plastic beverage bottles into 3-D printer filaments through a series of sustainable industrial processes. This focussed on localising sustainable consumption and imparting knowledge around waste segregation. The winning team received a grant of £500 to incubate their idea along with the continued support of Enactus and Warwick Enterprise