Young Irish social entrepreneurs heading to Campus Party

Campus Party logo, using Folio typeface FolioTEEMed font. Trademark of Futura Networks. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The largest technical festival in Europe kicks off in Berlin tomorrow. Campus Party will run from 21st to 26th August at the former Templehof airport in Berlin. It offers more than 600 hours of talks, discussions and workshops covering topics such as free software, entrepreneurship, social media, gaming, development, robotics and design. It brings together “10,000 of Europe’s most talented minds, all equipped with laptops, sleeping bags and great ideas.”

The keynote speakers at the event are: Sir Time Berners Lee, Paulo Coelho (author), Don Tapscott (author of ‘Growing up Digital) and Yossi Vardi, one of Israel’s pioneering tech entrepreneurs. The event will also be attended by the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda (did you know there was one?) and Ireland’s good friend, Angela Merkel.

Two young Irish people and their project teams are heading to the event following their success in a competition promoted by Headstrong and O2. The Think Big project is enabling young people in Ireland to create and participate in community projects which help make a difference to young people’s mental health. Since September 2010, the project has supported 200 ideas submitted through the o2thinkbig.ie website. Those who take part in Think Big receive training in project management, communications, confidence building, social media and mental health.

For Campus Party, Think Big asked young people to come up with a smartphone app to promote positive mental health. Out of the many entries received, Aisling Ní Chonaire and Kevin McGowan won their place at Campus Party. They will take part in an app development workshop and receive support from Headstrong and O2 to bring their ideas to fruition.

The winning project from Aisling Ní Chonaire, a Welfare Officer in Trinity College Dublin, is aimed at developing a welfare smartphone app. The app will make it easier for students to get information about mental, sexual and physical health, financial planning and other relevant topics.

Kevin McGown, from Schull, Co.Cork is the other competition winner. Kevin wants to promote positive mental health by developing an app to send ‘feel good texts’ promoting postive mental health to subscribers to the text service.