Social Hackathon Bonn - Turning Local Challenges into Collaborative Ideas 💡🌱

From 25-27 September 2026, EUth Wonders brought people together in Bonn for our Social Hackathon Bonn, a three-day event as part of the Hacktive Youth project focused on one central question:

How can we make life in Bonn more welcoming, accessible and connected for people with migrant and international backgrounds?

This Social Hackathon invited participants to explore real challenges, exchange their own experiences and work together to develop practical ideas for change.

The Culmination of a Longer Learning Journey

The Social Hackathon was not a standalone event, but the culmination of a much longer process of learning, experimentation and preparation.

Our workshop leaders, Shahed, Malaika and Victoria, were recruited as part of the Hacktive Youth project and took part in a series of learning activities, workshops and webinars designed to strengthen their knowledge and skills before bringing what they had learned into their own local activities.

The hackathon gave them the opportunity to put that learning into practice: facilitating discussions, guiding participants through the problem-solving process and helping transform conversations about local challenges into concrete ideas.

We were also incredibly grateful for the support of Ashish, who played an important role in the event's media and documentation. Capturing what happens during a participatory event is an essential part of ensuring that the conversations, experiences and ideas created there can continue reaching people after the event itself has finished.

And there is more coming from the weekend: stay tuned for podcast episodes produced during the Social Hackathon, where you will be able to hear more of the perspectives, discussions and experiences that emerged from the event.

Three Days of Ideas, Exchange and Collaboration

Across the three days, participants were encouraged to join whichever sessions worked for them, creating a flexible and open environment where new people, perspectives and ideas could enter the conversation throughout the event.

The hackathon brought together people with different backgrounds, experiences and connections to Bonn. Some knew the challenges of moving to a new country firsthand, while others brought experience from community work, education, volunteering and local initiatives.

Participants discussed some of the everyday structural barriers that can make settling into a new city difficult, from accessing information and navigating unfamiliar systems to building social connections, finding opportunities and developing a genuine sense of belonging.

From Challenges to Solutions

Working in groups, participants examined local challenges, shared experiences and began transforming them into possible solutions.

One of the ideas proposed during the hackathon focused on language and integration courses.

Participants discussed how important these courses can be for individual migrants, not only for learning German, but also for navigating everyday life, accessing employment and education, understanding local systems and becoming more connected to the communities around them.

Against the backdrop of recent restrictions affecting access to some integration courses and ongoing debate around their funding, participants proposed developing an awareness campaign highlighting the individual and wider social benefits of language and integration programmes.

The idea would be to make their impact more visible and help build public understanding of why continued investment in these opportunities matters.

This was exactly the kind of thinking the hackathon aimed to encourage: beginning with a challenge experienced by individuals, examining the systems surrounding it and then asking what realistic intervention could help influence change.

Creating Solutions With, Not For

An important part of the process was recognising that integration and belonging are not responsibilities that sit with newcomers alone.

Cities become more inclusive when residents, organisations, institutions and communities all have opportunities to connect, participate and contribute.

Social Hackathon Bonn therefore created a space where participants could move beyond talking about migrants and international residents and instead create ideas with the people directly affected by these challenges.

Participants' own experiences were treated as valuable knowledge that could inform the way problems were understood and potential solutions were designed.

A Starting Point, Not an Ending

A hackathon cannot solve every challenge facing migrants and international residents in three days, and that was never the goal.

Instead, Social Hackathon Bonn demonstrated what can happen when people are given the space to identify problems together, listen to different perspectives and imagine practical responses collectively.

It also represented an important milestone for the workshop leaders who had spent the project developing their own knowledge and facilitation skills before stepping into the role of guiding others through this process.

For EUth Wonders, activities like this reflect an important part of our work: creating participatory spaces where people are active contributors to the communities they live in.

We would like to thank Shahed, Malaika and Victoria for leading the workshops, Ashish for his fantastic support with media and documentation, and every participant who joined us, contributed an idea, shared an experience, asked a difficult question or helped someone else develop their concept.

The weekend may be over, but the conversations and connections created through the Social Hackathon are only the beginning.

And make sure to stay tuned for the podcast episodes created during the hackathon, where we will continue sharing the voices and ideas behind the weekend.

Thank you to everyone who helped us hack for a more connected Bonn!