The future of today’s youth is being shaped by decisions made by today’s leaders, yet their voices are often missing from the conversation. In Aotearoa New Zealand, just 65% of rangatahi aged 18-24 were enrolled to vote in the last election, compared to 94% among those aged 25 and over.
The team at Buzzly is working to address low youth engagement and change these statistics. Their new platform reimagines youth participation in a digital world, allowing rangatahi aged 16-24 to share their opinions with organisations to help inform decision-making and shape their futures.
With previous prototype Upsouth having seen success, the team chose Datacom, in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), to bring its new iteration to life as Buzzly. Tech career accelerator and higher education provider Mission Ready, social development programme The Southern Initiative (TSI), and Auckland Council also provided talent, insight, and funding in support of Buzzly’s mission.
As Product Owner at Buzzly and Systems Lead at TSI, Joel Umali has played a key role in Buzzly’s development and says it has been encouraging to see substantial uptake of the platform amongst rangatahi.
“In its lifetime, Buzzly has hosted over 40 challenges, collecting more than 4,500 ideas from youth, and has distributed over $45,000 in micro-rewards, indicating to us that we’re creating an engaging and valuable platform for our young people,” says Joel.
He says Buzzly is not another extractive platform. “We need to ensure young people feel empowered and valued – taking a collaborative approach and working with partners who share our values is helping us effectively actualise them. We’ve built something together that is making a real difference.”
Emerging Technologies Senior Consultant at Datacom Dipesh Trikam was proud to lead the project.
“The Buzzly project grew out of our work with schools and community engagement, as well as our commitment to supporting youth-oriented initiatives,” says Dipesh. “It’s been inspiring to work with our longstanding partners in Aotearoa’s tech ecosystem, strengthening our relationships and creating new ones that will help us continue to drive change.”
“One of the most rewarding moments was our official launch at Manurewa High School, where we saw young people genuinely excited to engage with Buzzly. It was a powerful reminder of how these opportunities can broaden horizons for those who may not otherwise have a platform.”
The project team engaged two cohorts from Mission Ready who contributed to chatbot development, UI redesign, documentation, and solutions architecture. Director Diana Sharma said getting involved in the project was an easy decision.
“Being a part of Buzzly has been an incredible journey. Our students gained hands-on experience and developed skills that will serve them well in their careers,” says Diana.
Joel says the synergy between the teams was evident from the start. “Without Datacom, AWS, and Mission Ready, we wouldn’t have been able to stand up Buzzly. Our partnership allowed us to be flexible, adjust to conditions, align resources with expectations, and think creatively on complex questions,” he says. “We became one big team, built on trust.”
When thinking about the “how” of getting youth to participate, the project team knew the process had to be fun and worthwhile. By gamifying challenges and offering micropayments as rewards for contributing, rangatahi are incentivised to share their opinions in response to ‘challenges’ from organisations, shared via the Buzzly platform.
The Buzzly team encourages participants to be creative with their entries, which can take any form, from a written entry to a piece of art or design, a video, or even a song or dance.
Challenges are outlined in engaging, Tik-Tok style videos put together by Buzzly rangatahi ambassadors and partner organisations. One recent challenge poses the question: “what kind of sustainable society do we want to create?” Others have asked, “how should the council connect with us?” and “how can we make education more engaging?”
To share their ideas, participants simply create an account with Buzzly, join the challenge, create their entries, upload them, and hit submit – a simple, intuitive process designed to remove barriers for participation, says Joel.
"Everything about Buzzly is youth-centric, from concept to design to implementation. Our goal has always been to create a platform that feels authentic and engaging for young people, and I think we’ve achieved that” he says.
“We’ve seen some incredible ideas that showcase the creativity and passion of our youth, the responses have been nothing short of inspiring – it’s clear the future is in good hands with today’s rangatahi.”
Leveraging the combined expertise of AWS and Datacom contributed to Buzzly’s success on many levels, says Joel. "Not only were we able to tap shared resources like dev advice, review of code and setup, but having reliable and mature organisations working on Buzzly gave us legitimacy, ensured we were measuring up to industry standards, and helped us with brand recognition,” he says.
Dipesh says putting technical capabilities to use for a cause that benefits the community has been incredibly fulfilling. “We’re not just building a system; we’re building a future where youth voices are heard and valued.”
“Datacom handled the development lifecycle, providing end-to-end solutions. We utilised technologies like Next.js for a responsive front-end, AWS services like ECS Fargate for container orchestration, and PostgreSQL for secure data storage. Our approach integrated core Māori values into the architecture to ensure cultural alignment,” he says.
Following the initial positive response, plans for the next version of Buzzly are already underway. The Datacom team is currently involved in solution architecture and tech consulting to expand its features, as they explore opportunities to enhance its reach and impact.
Joel says the future of Buzzly is bright. "We are planning to continue to the next stage of community building and add platform enhancements including client CRM and dashboard, improvements to our gamified rewards system, and an AI insights generation engine.”
"We're excited to keep working with Datacom. The team is skilled, experienced, and knowledgeable – the openness and camaraderie they showed us made us feel heard and valued, and we collaborated well together."
