5th Annual South LA Hustle N’ Code Hackathon

Do you have a great idea for a website or app? Have you ever wondered how your favorite websites and apps work?  BOSS™ student athletes do, and a team of them participated in their first hackathon, the 5th Annual South LA Hustle N’ Code Hackathon.

The hackathon was held at South Park Recreation Center in South Los Angeles on Saturday December 3, 2016. The team of Bryce and Clark Phillips, Andrew Pierce and Jordan Turner joined over 300 other youngsters and 100 software developers, designers and idea generators with a passion for mentoring Black and Brown youth in tech in a day of innovation. Participants used code to address a host of community problems, including ways to improve their church, school, block, park and other parts of the community.

With great prizes, cool giveaways and great music, the exciting event was a huge success thanks to sponsors that included Bel Air Internet, California Community Foundation, Google, Media Temple, Hacker Fund, The Riordan Foundation, Tinder, Zapata/King Neighborhood Council and .XYZ.

The event was staged by Teens Exploring Technology (TXT). TXT encourages inner city teenage Black and Latino males to become catalysts of change in urban communities. Our approach is to use technology as a tool for promoting positive youth development and leadership, and ultimately paving the pathway to higher education and majors and careers in Science, Technology Engineering, Math (STEM). BOSS™ is a STEM-based academic, leadership, mentoring and personal development program for student athletes with a train the trainer aspect of student athletes using their considerable influence with their non-athlete peers to remove the obstacles they both see in their path to excelling academically and joining the ranks of the successful.

Team BOSS™ was able to develop a working prototype of an app to further the entrepreneurial efforts of Bryce and Clark Phillips and their Run It Back Sports endeavor. To learn more about Run It Back Sports, please visit http://runitbacksports.com/