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The demand for humanitarian aid is on the rise. Join the Humanitarian Hackathon to create cutting-edge solutions saving lives and changing lives around the world.

Why

According to OCHA, more than 134 million people around the world need humanitarian assistance and protection – and more funding then ever is required to help them. That number is likely to rise even further, driven by climate change and conflict. In the context of the growing humanitarian needs and limited funding, innovative solutions are crucial to assist the most vulnerable groups in a more effective and efficient way. Close collaboration between humanitarian organizations, research institutes, civil society and the private sector is a prerequisite for boosting the use of state-of-the-art technologies for the benefit of those left furthest behind.

About

The Humanitarian Hackathon is a two-day event designed to create technology-driven solutions for the most pressing humanitarian challenges. International and Belgian humanitarian organizations, donors, large companies, startups, scientists and engineers will come up with new ideas, build prototypes and launch innovative projects, which could help save millions of lives around the world.

Organisers

The Humanitarian Hackathon is an initiative of the Belgian Ministry for Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda and Telecommunications, a major donor of international humanitarian aid. The event is organised by the World Food Programme (WFP), a leading humanitarian and development organization fighting hunger worldwide, and by Hack Belgium Labs, the creator of Belgium’s biggest multi-stakeholder hackathon. Together, we aim to gather top experts from the humanitarian field, innovative companies and tech talents from a variety of sectors .

For Whom

The hackathon is open to participants and partners who have the skills and organisational capacity to create, deliver and/or fund innovative solutions, such as:

  • Belgian and International humanitarian NGO's and Non-Profit organisations.
  • Technology startups and companies of all sizes
  • Social enterprises
  • Academics
  • Current and potential donors (governmental and non-governmental)
  • Scientists
  • Professional designers, developers and engineers

The 5 Challenges

  • Smallholder Farmers

    Worldwide, there are more than 500 million smallholders. They are the backbone of agricultural production in developing countries. Despite producing most of the world’s food, they tend to be food insecure themselves: globally, they form the majority of people living in poverty. How might we empower smallholder farmers to access markets and new business opportunities so that they can break the cycle of poverty for good?

  • School Feeding

    Every day, countless children across the globe turn up for school on an empty stomach, which makes it hard to focus on lessons. Particularly in times of crisis, having access to food at school can make all the difference. How might we create an efficient, transparent, user-friendly procurement platform for schools to source their school feeding program?

  • Climate Change

    How might we use emerging technologies such as drone imagery to predict population movement to better understand and then optimize the response accordingly? The same technology can be used to count refugee population in a crisis (example Northern Uganda, Colombia)? How can we combine Logs Cluster data with data on where refugees are, to optimize getting assistance to them.

  • Emergency Response/ Humanitarian Aid

    The number of people displaced by conflict have increased over the last ten years, including both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). How can humanitarian response planning for refugees and displaced people feed off the information contained in high resolution satellite images? How can we maximize the information potential of drones and high resolution satellite data over refugee and displaced population camp settlements?

  • Beneficiary Data Management

    Large-scale humanitarian action is concerned with understanding the needs of the most vulnerable and implementing humanitarian solutions to address those needs. To accomplish this, humanitarian actors are establishing or using operational platforms to provide assistance. How might we empower the people we serve and the humanitarian community to collect, manage, store and use beneficiary data in a manner that facilitates interoperability, while ensuring the empowerment and protection of the most vulnerable?

Two Tracks

Tech Track team will be focusing on developing prototypes using the latest technologies from the private sector. Existing tech teams can be enriched with participants with design, developing or engineering skills.

Connect Track teams will explore how they can launch viable new projects to solve one of the challenge by combining expertise and resources from multiple stakeholders. Such teams will be formed on the spot with participants combining diverse skills and experience.

All teams will be supported by humanitarian experts from the WFP, other organisations and donors. Tech & Connect Tracks teams will be encouraged to engage each other for ideation or validation purposes.

  • organised by
    World Food Programme
  • Hack Belgium Labs
  • initiative of
    Belgium Partner in Development