Larissa Hackathon

WHO

SPOKESPERSONS: Relevant local stakeholders will be invited to participate in the event such as: the Vice Mayor in charge of the Operational Design (Mr. George Soultis), the Vice Mayor in charge of the Social Policy and Educational Activities (Mr. Voulgaris Sotirios), representatives from the Region of Thessaly and representatives from the Decentralized Administration of Thessaly. Their role will be to present the overall approach that is followed by the provision of the relevant services to the migrants.

MENTORS: The Municipality's IT department will act as the main facilitator of the online Hackathon and provide, where necessary, relevant support to the participants. On top of this, Municipality's easyRights experts will facilitate the event, making sure that all Hackathon's activities and solutions are in line with the project's objectives and requirements.

PARTICIPANTS: The hackathon is open to approximately 20-30 participants. We truly believe in diversity and collaboration to find meaningful and context-rooted solutions. Therefore, regardless of their background or nationality, the participants we seek respond to the broad (and specific) description of visionaries, developers, designers, marketers entrepreneurs, engineers, migrants & field experts.

PARTNERS: UTH and IED

PROCESS

TEAM FORMATION: We encourage you to form your own team with the people you know you work better with

register as individual or together with your group
the platform for registration is Eventbrite
to facilitate the group formation for those who register individually, a discussion group will be formed established in a Facebook Group
teams must be formed at least 10 days before the event

HACKATHONS: Fully online, the intensive 72-hour will provide the collaborative and engaging environment to transform solution ideas into prototypes.

POST- HACKATHON: The hackathon's winner will work together with easyRights technical team and the IT departments of the existing services to make sure that their solutions are integrated with existing public services and improves migrants' accessibility for them.

The winner will conduct a 5000€ contract, that must be used to further develop the project, in collaboration with easyRights technical team and the Municipality of Larissa.

LARISSA MIGRATION HACKATHON: A CITY FOR EVERYONE

Ensuring Larissa is 'home' for everyone

Implementation of creation: ASAP
Registration opening: 14th December 2020
Registration closing: 15th January 2021
Hackathon event: 21st, 22nd, 23rd January 2021
Contacting the winners: 3rd February 2021

Greek version of the website

Download the one-pager

WHY

Greece is Europe's entry point for vast numbers of refugees and migrants. Acting as such and building on the European legislation for applying for asylum, Greece was forced to develop extra procedures and structures in order to efficiently support these people and provide them with safety. However, while the relevant legislation, laws, and procedures do exist, refugees and migrants struggle to access them. On
one hand, this may be due to language barriers, but on the other hand, there is also a lot of work to do in relation to the procedures and approach to services they are entitled to and need to be part of.

Among these services, there is the Certification of Residence. Owning an official Certificate of Residence is an important milestone for migrants settling down in an unknown community and location. This certificate allows migrants to successfully proceed with and complete the procedure for acquiring or renewing the visa that grants them rights for legal and permanent stay in Greece. This Certificate is
among the relevant documentation that migrants need to collect in order to complete the relevant procedure. It is therefore fundamental for migrants to understand how to register and proceed with the application of Residence so they can access other public services and properly establish in their new location.

Only accessible and service-minded paths in the bureaucratic processes associated with the Certificate of Residence can guarantee migrants' exercise of their rights. Let's join forces to provide the needed support and missing tools in this journey and collaborate to empower migrant communities to ensure an equal, diverse, and respectful society.

THE CHALLENGE

The application of the Certificate of Residency consists of several steps migrants have to fulfill and go through. As most of the process requires physical meetings in offices, migrants encounter officers they do not share a language with, face with outdated technological procedures, and have no feedback on their specific cases. For migrants, the whole journey is full of hazardous operations, indecipherable channels and unwelcoming formats. Consequently, the slow responses and interaction with the system translate into tedious and lengthy interactions until they receive their Certificates.

Within this framework, facilitating the migrants' access to the relevant data and material to process their Residency (either physically or digitally) and remain informed of the process status is a pressing issue. Developing an innovative tool that integrates with and bridges the gaps of the existing service will have a remarkable impact on both sides: relevant public authorities will improve and facilitate the provision of
relevant services, while refugees and migrants will have easier and immediate access to them.

During the challenge, you will try to find solutions that make the process of interacting with the Certificate of Residency more accessible* and transparent, and shape the service in order to make sure that migrants understand all the aspects of the process (documentation, Municipality departments to refer to, timeline, rights).

* Improving the accessibility of the service refers to the channels that provide the access (even when the migrant does not have an e-mail address), but also alludes to the clarification of procedures, the recognition of migrants’ native languages, the offer of encouraging and enticing formats that resemble software and technologies they are already familiar with. Yet, as the winning solution is meant to be implemented into the existing service, participants should remain aware and consider the technical limitations of Greek public administrations systems and platforms.

THE ORGANISER

Larissa Migration Hackathon: A city for Everyone, will be organized by the Municipality of Larissa. The Municipality of Larissa holds a critical role between other local authorities, public bodies and social organizations. Its services embrace everyday matters in cooperation with the organizations participating in the local coordinating body (e.g. Refugees' camp of Koutsohero, military, police, regional authority, ministry of
education, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, DRC, etc.). The city is the designated coordinator of the local network of volunteers, a network that includes both organizations (public and NGOs) and individuals and has been approved by the relative national ministry.

GOALS

The main objective of the online Hackathon will be to address specific needs and challenges that immigrants face during their interaction with public authorities for relevant services provision and, specifically, with the Municipality of Larissa, through the design and development of innovative technical solutions. Specifically, the main aim is to achieve a higher level of digitalization of the services provided by the Municipality to the immigrants as well as to overcome the limiting language barriers.

PROJECT CONTEXT

The Larissa Migration Hackathon: A city for everyone is part of easyRights, a European H2020 project with a simple goal: to combine co-creation and AI technology to make it easier for immigrants to understand and access the services they are entitled to.

Bringing together immigrants, the public sector and private organisations, easyRights will develop a platform to provide personalised, context-aware information to its users, taking into account background, demographics and language skills. The platform will support immigrants in their search for responses for different needs in a manner that saves time for both migrants and for social service staff and cutting costs for the public administration.

The easyRights platform is being developed and deployed in four pilot locations (Birmingham, Larissa, Palermo and Malaga).