When five students from Maryvit Sattahip School in eastern coastal Thailand joined the very first MISSION POSSIBLE Youth Social Hackathon in 2024, they could hardly imagine how far their idea would take them.
The social hackathon is a one-of-a-kind platform, started in Thailand, where high school students aged 13–19 are empowered to investigate chronic social issues, design creative solutions, and pitch for funding before mentors and experts.
Rooted in the Synod of Catholic Bishops in Asia and inspired by Pope Francis’ call in his encyclicals, the initiative invites young people to “hack” real-world crises—from climate change and migrant labor to family and digital-life challenges.
Winners do not just get applause but receive real project funding to turn their dreams into reality.
The Maryvit hackers chose the theme “Family is the foundation of society,” believing that the strength of communities begins at home. Their idea was warmly received at the hackathon—and won them the highest funding of the season, 125,000 THB, to turn their concept into reality.
One year later, on stage, addressing fellow hackers in season two of MISSION POSSIBLE in Thailand, the same students came back not as competitors but as role models, offering a heartfelt message to inspire the new generation of hackers.
“I was once in your place before and I know exactly how hard it is to choose a topic and deliver a complete pitch within just four minutes,” Tiyada Chomdearn, a Maryvit hacker from season one, recalled.
“At first, we thought pitching was the hardest part,” Siravit Jaijang, another season one hacker, added. “But who would have thought—winning and then actually making it real turned out to be even harder! We had zero background in app development, but we had something more important—hearts ready to make society better and more livable.”
From pitch to product
The students began their pitch with a striking insight: in many families today, members live under the same roof but feel disconnected. Parents and children often spend more time looking outward—at school, work, or online—than listening to one another.
“Why do we sometimes feel like we live in the same house, but in different worlds?” they asked.
Their answer was to design a digital tool to rebuild connections inside the home.
With 125,000 baht in funding from MISSION POSSIBLE, the team embarked on a four-stage journey, starting with self-learning and coding practice, then building prototypes, and eventually seeking collaboration with an ICT faculty at a national university.
At first, they tried to build the app on their own using Thunkable—a platform that enables app development without coding knowledge—but quickly hit limitations.
That challenge became a turning point. Determined to succeed, they learned more advanced programming tools with guidance from older ICT students to finally transform their vision into a working product.
Bond Up: features for stronger families
The app they created, Bond Up, is built entirely around strengthening the family unit. Each feature is designed not just as a tool, but as a way of sparking conversation and reducing misunderstandings at home:
- Shared Calendar: so every family member can see one another’s schedules, helping parents and children plan shared meals, trips, or downtime together.
- Milestone Tracker: a digital memory book where families can record achievements big and small, from birthdays and school milestones to simple weekly dinners.
- Private Group Chat: with video and voice options in a secure space where screenshots are disabled, ensuring conversations stay safe and personal.
- Financial Management Tools: giving transparency to household budgeting, saving, and spending, so money issues don’t become barriers to trust.
- Knock Knock (What’s the matter?): a safe space for any family member to signal that they need to be heard, creating a gentle way to ask for help.
“It began with one important question: why do we sometimes live in the same house, yet feel like we’re in different worlds?” Tiyada explained. “But the pitch on stage, even receiving funding, was only the beginning. The real challenge came afterward: designing the logo, fixing features, writing code, trial and error, all the way through to developing an application that could truly be used.”
Pushing a dragon jar
The journey was anything but easy. The students had to balance schoolwork with hours of debugging, learn programming languages from scratch, and redesign their user experience multiple times.
At one point, Siravit admitted it felt like “pushing a giant dragon jar up Mount Everest.” But each time discouragement crept in, they thought about the families who might benefit if they persevered and kept going.
After months of consultation, planning, and prototyping, their persistence paid off. Bond Up is now officially available for download on both iOS and Android.
Together we MAKE a better world POSSIBLE
For the Maryvit Sattahip team, what began as a four-minute pitch has become a tool that may help countless families rebuild communication and trust.
Their journey is proof of the MISSION POSSIBLE spirit: listening to youth, daring them to dream, and funding those dreams into reality.
