Housing, Isolation & Belonging: HACKTIVE YOUTH in Berlin 🤝🏠

On 17 August 2026, HACKTIVE YOUTH participants Shahed and Malaika organised and facilitated a local workshop in Berlin focusing on an issue that affects many young people with immigrant backgrounds: the connection between housing, isolation and belonging.

Eight young people took part in the session, with backgrounds from Tunisia, Pakistan and Russia. Some were students, some were working and others were currently looking for work. This mix of experiences gave the group plenty to talk about, particularly when it came to settling into life in Germany, finding housing, building a social circle and feeling part of a community.

The workshop was developed around the question: how can young people facing these challenges move from talking about them to thinking about what they can actually change?

Starting with lived experience

Shahed and Malaika began by getting everyone acquainted before introducing the main topic.

The first activity focused on mapping their own experiences. Using large flipcharts, participants explored housing difficulties and their impact on community ties, including how unstable housing, discrimination, frequent moves or difficulties finding a place to live can contribute to isolation and a weaker sense of belonging.

This was an important part of the workshop because the two issues are often treated separately. Housing can look like a practical problem and loneliness like a personal one, but the session encouraged participants to look at how closely the two can be connected.

Afterwards, the groups exchanged their flipcharts and took time to read and discuss what the other group had written.

This opened up a wider conversation.

People shared difficulties they had experienced themselves, but also the ways they had dealt with them, from finding their own social networks to small strategies that had helped them feel less isolated.

From discussion to a mini Social Hackathon

The second half of the workshop moved from sharing experiences to looking for solutions.

This is where the HACKTIVE YOUTH Social Hackathon approach came in.

Participants were asked to take a real problem and work together on a concrete first response. The goal was to practise taking a big social problem and finding one realistic place to start.

Each group worked through four steps:

1. Define the problem: Who is affected, and how?

2. Generate ideas: What different solutions could help?

3. Choose and develop: Which idea has the most potential, and how could it work?

4. Plan the first action: What is one concrete step that could actually be taken next?

   
   

The workshop also connected these discussions to active citizenship.

Participants looked at the fact that getting involved in your community can begin with a neighbourhood initiative, a shared group chat, contacting a tenants' group, organising a meeting, or just bringing people together around a common problem.

HACKTIVE YOUTH beyond the project activities

What made this workshop especially valuable for us was that Shahed and Malaika were not there as professional trainers, they were participants of HACKTIVE YOUTH themselves.

They took what they had learned through the project and used it to create a space for other young people in Berlin. They chose an issue that was relevant to their local context, facilitated the activities and helped the group work through the Social Hackathon process.

That is exactly the kind of continuation we want to see from HACKTIVE YOUTH: participants taking the methods, ideas and confidence they gain through the project and adapting them to the communities around them.

By the end of the workshop, the conversation had moved from “this is something I struggle with” to “what could we do about it?”

For a topic as big as housing and as personal as loneliness, that is a pretty good place to start.

Thank you again to Shahed, Malaika, and all the participants!