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Personal safety app wins McShane Young Digital Disruptor Award

Written by 3 minute read

The winning team for the 2018 Digital Disruptors programme was announced last week.

Digital Disruptors enables young people to understand the opportunities that digital brings to our lives, and aims to inspire them to investigate careers in the digital industry. 

Launched in memory of Nicky McShane, one of the industry’s most exuberant and progressive digital marketers who sadly passed away at the end of last year, Digital Disruptors was co-Founded by CEO of Found Tina Judic and FYA Director Julie York.

In partnership with The Hebe Foundation, 40 young people from South London pitched ideas on how they would use digital to bring together their community.

Working together

The young people were hosted at businesses including Snap, vouchercloud, Awin, Disrupt and Found, where teams hosted workshops to give them access to the expertise within the businesses.
 
Each team had a dedicated mentor, and over the course of several months, the mentors and teams met to develop their ideas. 
 
Hayley Law, Account Manager at Awin was a mentor, and noted that “the young people have been full of brilliant ideas; I have loved seeing them develop, and hope to work with them ongoing as they continue to explore digital.”
 
The final


The finalists took to the main stage at performance marketing conference PI LIVE to pitch their ideas to the judges from Button, Snap, The Drum and Increasingly, in the hope of winning a the McShane Young Digital Disruptor Award. 

The winning team devised a touchscreen app, Look Out, which enables users to flag geographical areas of danger to their contacts, and send alerts if they are in urgent need of police help.
 
Digital Disruptors 2018 
Team Look Out was made up of Katie Nyarko and Zion Simpson. Katie said: “Our aim was to use digital to connect people in our community, promote selflessness and community spirit and help to keep areas safer.”
Awin's Media Partnership Manager Clementyne Lavender mentored team Look Out, and said that "overseeing their impressive progression was a fantastic experience - their concept oozed innovation, inventiveness and community spirit. I hope that this programme can continue to offer like-minded young people a platform for their creativity."

The young people will be awarded prizes for their contribution at this week’s programme wrap party, including vouchers kindly donated from Awin partners including Gymshark and Superdry.
 
Digital Disruptors Founder Tina Judic says: “Digital Disruptors is all about harnessing the creativity and innovative thinking that we know already exists out there whilst also giving these young minds direct access to some of the industry’s smartest individuals and businesses. Working in partnership with the amazing youth charity The Hebe Foundation, we’ve only just begun to lift the lid on this amazing talent and we’re now looking at how we can expand the programme to other UK cities and abroad over the coming years.”
 
Contact the Digital Disruptors team to find out about how to host an inhouse workshop, offer work placements or to provide mentoring support.