Immigration and Refugee Hackathon Round-Up
In honor of Immigrant Heritage Month and World Refugee Day, GlobalHack made a round-up of past hackathons and tech events that have focused on bettering the experiences of foreign-born individuals and communities around the world.
But first, let’s take a moment to remember what these times stand for. During the month of June, we honor both the monumental contributions that immigrants have made to our society, along with the courage, strength and perseverance of those who are forced to flee their homelands due to threat of persecution and violence. For many, the transition is not easy or seamless. Recognizing the experiences of foreign-born individuals offers a chance to refocus efforts to improve the issues they face.
On October 12th-14th, 2018, GlobalHack — in partnership with Casa de Salud, the International Institute, the St. Louis Mosaic Project and the Immigrant Service Providers Network (ISPN) — is hosting a hackathon to do just that. Teams will work to build tools, apps and platforms to improve the experiences of foreign-born individuals in St. Louis and beyond. Similar efforts have proven successful in the past — check out a few of the events we found to be inspiring:
Startup Weekend Immigration in May 2015 focused on bringing together a group of social-minded individuals who cared about immigration and wanted to create tech solutions for the good of the community. After a weekend of pitching ideas and making them come to life, some pretty cool stuff came out of the event. For example, the 2nd place winner was a project named Estrella, which helps immigrants find free or low-cost resources near them. A lot of the decisions that foreign-born individuals must make can be vulnerable to fraud, so that’s where Estrella comes in to provide support.
In 2015, Germany took in nearly one million refugees. The Refugee Hackathon set out to impact the lives of those individuals by creating simpler access to information and existing services. Over the course of a weekend, 19 projects were conceptualized and created. HiMate was one of those projects. It was initially created to provide product coupons to refugees, but has since evolved and now supplies vouchers for free cultural and recreational community events to help encourage refugees and locals to get to know each other. They currently reach about 15,000 refugees in Berlin and eventually hope to expand the service across Germany.
The I Stand With Immigrants hackathon was inspired by the ‘I Am An Immigrant’ movement, which encourages Americans to explore, celebrate and take pride in their own immigrant heritage. In 2017, the cause celebrated its second annual hackathon and was able to produce an impressive prototype in only 24 hours. The winning project, ‘U.S. Welcome’ was inspired by individuals who go to a foreign country and are unfamiliar with how things work in their new surroundings. The app first works by accessing the user’s camera, and when the user is unsure of what an object is or does, they point their camera at the object and a geotag will appear describing what it is.
These events are just a few of many. Immigrant and refugee focused hackathons are becoming increasingly popular, and understandably so, as The UN Refugee Agency reports 68.5 million individuals worldwide are currently forcibly displaced from their homes. GlobalHack is happy to be joining this movement with GlobalHack VII, October 12–14, 2018.
For more information about GlobalHack VII, check out https://globalhack.org/globalhack7/
Today and every day, we #CelebrateImmigrants and stand #WithRefugees.
