Patch Summer Updates
This summer at Patch has been an absolute whirlwind of activity. A group of 35 new Patchers joined us on July 3rd for some icebreakers and the official kick-off of our summer programme. Once everyone was settled in, we jumped straight into team building, ideation, prototyping, building, and then—suddenly—the Showcase!
By the numbers, this year was our most successful summer programme to date. We received twice as many applications as last year, supported the largest number of participants and teams, took on some of the most ambitious projects, and had the largest Showcase attendance in Patch history. More importantly, the Patchers had a great time (and hopefully learned a lot along the way):
100% said taking part in Patch gave them a wider group of friends and supportive peers
100% said Patch broadened their perspective
93% said Patch increased their ambition, and
43% said they slept enough during Patch (Oof! Sorry, parents!)
Overall, the teams made phenomenal progress in just six weeks and the Showcase was a fantastic celebration of their achievement. You can check out all of the pitches here. The product Patchers voted 'most likely to use' was CartShare and the most memorable project was definitely PatchDog. I hope we get a few more robot dogs next year :-)
But, we don't want you to have to wait until next year to build your robot dog. That's why we just launched Patch Grants. We're now offering €1,000 and mentorship for young people anywhere in Ireland who want to build something amazing. Ready to build something cool but need funding or support to get started?
