WordPress Cape Town to Host 2nd Annual Charity Hackathon in June

Last August, the WordPress Cape Town meetup group experimented with hosting its first charity hackathon to benefit local charities. The do_action( ‘wordpress-charity-hackathon’ ); event was so successful in 2014 that organizers were inspired to make it an annual event. The 2015 hackathon is scheduled for June 20th from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM.

“With a team of nearly 50 volunteers from the community, we built brand new websites for nine different charitable organizations and we will be doing the same again this year,” said Hugh Lashbrooke, an organizer for the event.

The concept will be the same as the previous year – volunteers will build sites for nine Capetown-based charities, giving each their own unique online presence by the end of the day.

A few examples of websites built by the volunteers last year include:

Feeding in Action

St. Luke’s Hospice

Equinox Trust

Care Career Connection

The UPliftment Porgramme

“The charities this year are equally as deserving and spread across the whole spectrum of society again,” Lashbrooke said. The 2015 charities list includes organizations such as the Academy for Adults with Autism, FoodBank South Africa, and the Down Syndrome Inclusive Education Foundation NPC.

Sponsors this year include Hetzner, Obox, and WooThemes. Their generous contributions will help to provide snacks, lunch, dinner, and a prize for the team that builds the best site of the day. All attendees will also receive a ticket to WordCamp Cape Town 2015.

“We are still looking for volunteers (there are about 20 spots left at the time of writing this) and it’s important to note that we are not just looking for developers here,” he said. “This is open to Project Managers, Designers, Developers, Content Creators, and Social Media Managers, as all of those individuals are needed to bring a complete website together (especially when it is all being done in one day.)”

If you’re in the Cape Town area and you’d like to be part of this event, you can select a charity team to work on and specify your role when filling out the volunteer application form. Check out the recap video below for a closer look at attendees’ experiences from last year’s event.