BUFFALO, N.Y. — This year, 43 North's hackathon challenged 200 participants to work remotely to build something to support the Buffalo community. The winning team was a group of parents who created a resources for other people who are balancing working from home and educating their children.
The team launched Creative Kidz. It's an online platform where parents can share and discover creative ideas for projects that will engage and entertain children.
"I think the good thing is with this platform, it's easy to use and it also gives some interaction with the other parents," said one of the team members, Hazel Aksel. Aksel is a dentistry professor at SUNY Buffalo.
She collaborated with her husband, Fatih, a software engineer, and friend Jeffrey Raugh on the idea.
"This is just the start, right, I mean we're planning to take the next couple months, we've got some prize winnings right now it gives us a little bit of a window to improve. We want parents and kids to start using it today," said Raugh.
The Creative Kidz team won the $10,000 grand prize at the event. The platform is free to access, and you can find it by clicking this link.
This year's 2nd place finisher was a project called "Buffalo Indicators," which is a community information system focused on data-driven culture across various categories including education, health, environment, and arts and culture.
The third place finishers were Agnieszka Wilewicz and Jesse Farinacci, who created a game called "The BuffaLoves Trivia Game." Through the game, Amazon's Alexa tests your knowledge of Buffalo history and landmarks, connecting you with the things you love most about our city.