Hack the Camp

#TheChallenge
How can we improve living conditions for refugees? How can they access reliable information on their legal status? What kind of opportunities are available or can be created for refugees? How can we tap on the many skills that moving populations bring with them? How can populations in transit and local populations come closer and develop an intercultural dialogue?

These are some of the challenges that Hack the Camp (#HackTheCamp) will attempt to address. Impact Hub Athens, the Onassis Stegi and the U.S. Embassy in Athens are joining forces for Hack the Camp, a two-part hackathon on refugee and integration challenges.

#Who
Programmers, designers, social entrepreneurs, humanitarian workers, educators, artists and other interested professionals are invited to work together and find sustainable and scalable solutions for and with refugees and migrants in Greece. Migrant and refugee populations are also invited to participate in the process, voice their concerns, and share their knowledge and expertise.

The hackathon is addressed to people with and without technological skills, and the outcomes can include mobile applications and technology solutions, as well as ideas for non-technology products and services, or cultural and educational platforms. Interested participants can apply as individuals and find partners during the launch event of the hackathon; or they can apply as teams. The hackathon follows a Critical Engineering approach, i.e. finding and “making” a solution to a real world challenge that aims at effecting social change.

#MeetTheHackers
Hack the Camp will be comprised of two events: the Meet the Hackers event will be held on 21-22 October 2016, at Diplareios School, where selected experts will announce the challenges and the methodology of the event, participants will form teams and start brainstorming. Starting from that weekend, and for the next six weeks, the teams will have the opportunity to meet as their schedules allow. They will have access to the Greek and international mentors of the hackathon, who will offer tech skills and advice to teams that need it. Impact Hub Athens will provide space for teams to meet and connect with their mentors. The resulting teams will be able to submit their updated concepts before November 22nd, when the review process begins.

#HackTheCamp
The main Hack the Camp event will take place on 2-4 December 2016, at Impact Hub Athens, where the selected participants will prototype their idea and develop it into a sustainable solution, with the help of mentors. During the final day of Hack the Camp, the teams will present their projects and a Judging Panel of experts will decide on the top three teams/hacks. The winners will receive monetary awards, as well as free incubation services at Impact Hub. The teams and hack projects will be judged based on the following criteria: impact, user experience and presentation, sustainability, innovation, and reusability.

Hackathon solutions and outcomes will focus primarily on the refugee and migrant populations currently in Greece, and aid organizations offering services to refugees. Some of the solutions may apply to other groups as well, including long-term migrants and local populations that will benefit of intercultural understanding.

#OpenSource
It is our intention to share all code and other digital assets on the HackTheCamp organization at GitHub, using open licenses, to enable solutions to be developed outside the hackathon event itself, to maximize the benefit to the NGO sector and to form the basis of a community of tech peacebuilders.

#Supporters
Two international organizations with long experience in humanitarian-related hackathons will act as consultants, facilitators and moderators at the events. Creative Associates from the U.S. and International Alert from the UK will be the main facilitators of Hack the Camp.

Microsoft supports actively Hack the Camp by contributing to the monetary prizes, offering technological and entrepreneurial mentoring services to the teams, as well as software and devices, helping towards the success of the initiative.

GFOSS – Open Technologies Alliance within the context of the ongoing collaboration with the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, actively supports Hack the Camp with demonstrations of open hardware and software while partners of the Open Technologies Alliance will participate in both stages of Hack the Camp and support the participating teams in using collaborative design and programming tools, as well as enable them to share their creations on open collaborative platforms.