Social Impact Hackathons

“Hackathons are where your crazy idea becomes reality.” - Alex Kern

Coding for Community believes in the power of technological solutions to remediate society’s most pressing problems. Through our engagement with students at the high school and college level, including underprivileged populations and refugee populations, we seek to build apps that address issues at the local, state, and nationwide level.

Our hackathons unite students of all backgrounds and education levels to address challenging projects for humankind, in the process enabling collaboration and hands-on learning. Inspired by the 1001 Social Hackathons Project from Vienna, all of our hackathons seek to create impact in the following areas:

• Tackling food waste and food distribution.
• Remediating the complex legal, social, and economic challenges refugees face.
• Helping children to engage with technology in an active way.
• Enabling urban community and social cohesion through neighborhoods.
• Bringing social entrepreneurs and investors together.
• Creating social value through technology refurbishment and reuse.
• Using the power of technology to enable smart and green energy.

In the past, our hackathon produced the StopFoodWastage app (available on Google Android and Apple iPhone), which uses cloud technology and geolocation matching to connect restaurants and food charities in an effort to reduce food wastage in the community. The idea came from constant engagement with local partners and development was led by Dipen Mehta, founder of Coding for Community.