Contribute your skills at these COVID-19 hackathons

If you, like me, feel restless about the pandemic we are facing, why not contribute your skills at these hackathons to build something useful?

Mar 16 - Apr 30, 2020: CODEVID-19

The world’s first pandemic hackathon, this is a global initiative to improve people's quality of live and fight the pandemic.

Mark Bennett

@markbennett

@AHS_media Great suggestion! Together with a group of awesome volunteers I've been organizing @codevid19, a global hackathon to help people manage through the pandemic. We've got 1400 devs, and 36 projects now. Hoping to find ways to help with the skills we have!

01:56 AM - 29 Mar 2020

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Project themes: Supporting Crisis Response, Understanding The Pandemic, Social Distancing & Isolation, Scarcity & The Economy

Mar 20 - Apr 27, 2020: 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge

Now in its third year, the Call for Code initiative is the largest technical challenge of its kind. The 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge asks the world's developers to build solutions for COVID-19 and climate change.

Project themes: Crisis communication, remote education, community cooperation

Mar 23 - Apr 12, 2020: Hack Quarantine

Powered by GitHub and Hackathons UK, Hack Quarantine is a fully-online, people-focused hackathon bringing people together to use their skills to help combat the issues the world is facing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project themes: Supporting people quarantined or at risk, tech and health, remote working, improving awareness and behaviour

Mar 28 - Apr 4, 2020: COVID-19 Global Church Hackathon

COVID-19 Global Church Hackathon is a one-week online hackathon for the Global Church during the COVID-19 pandemic. Judges include representation from NASA and Facebook.

Project themes: Funeral, neighbouring, elderly, mental health, identity, worship, evangelism, discipleship, gather, resources

Apr 3-5, 2020: #VersusVirus Hackathon

VersusVirus is a Swiss-wide virtual hackathon under the patronage of the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) and the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER). It aims to leverage the collective intelligence of researchers, experts, technology specialists and fellow citizens to develop fresh ideas and solutions for dealing with and combating the coronavirus.

Project themes: Protection of risk groups, dissemination prevention, trustable data vs fake news, economical impact, isolation and mental health, hospital and medical care, family and kids, education, home office and teamwork, after the crisis, support and solidarity, art and culture, crime reduction

Apr 3-5, 2020: MIT COVID-19 Challenge

The MIT COVID-19 Challenge event, Beat the Pandemic, is the second in a series of virtual hackathons. Over the course of two days, multi-disciplinary teams will collaborate to develop innovative solutions that can help address the COVID-19 crisis. After the Challenge, selected teams will have the opportunity to bring their solutions to life with the support of our partners.

Project themes: Protecting vulnerable populations, helping health systems

Various dates: Hack the Crisis Hackathons

Started from an online hackathon in Estonia organized by AccelerateEstonia, Garage48, and Guaana to tackle the devastating effects of the Coronavirus crisis, Hack the Crisis has become a global movement with over 40 hackathons organized around the world. Here is the list of upcoming Hack the Crisis hackathons that seem to accept submissions in English and take place over a fixed period of time:

• Apr 2-4, 2020: Hack The Crisis Kosova. Project themes: Health and emergency, social and psychological status, education and learning, economy and the future of business, government solutions
• Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Australia. Project themes: Improve life, health, and wellness
• Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Denmark. Project themes: Containment of COVID-19 with intent to develop (non-medical) solutions to deal with its aftermath
• Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Cyprus. Project themes: Save lives, save communities, save businesses, save mental well-being
• Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Netherlands. Project themes: Open-ended, suggested themes include patient care, protection for medical and sanitary staff at hospitals, virus containment and digital solutions for people and business in quarantine
• Apr 3-6, 2020: Hack The Crisis Sweden. Project themes: Save lives, save communities, save businesses

Apr 4-5, 2020: Hack from Home

HfH is a virtual hackathon sponsored by Dataswift.io and organised by the Ethical Tech Alliance, HAT-LAB, Case Western Reserve University’s xLab, Cleveland Clinic’s Hwang Lab and WMG - University of Warwick.

Project themes: Citizen science, community health, mass coordination

Apr 9-12, 2020: The Global Hack

The Global Hack is an online hackathon solving the problems we are facing as a global society after the immediate corona crisis is over.

Organized by the folks behind the Hack the Crisis movement, I also love how they leverage Reddit (on top of the usual Slack) to engage with participants.

Project themes: Arts & creativity, crisis response, economy, education, empowerment, environment, governance, health & wellness, media & entertainment, mental health, work

United Nations: Global Call to Creatives

Not a hackathon but I thought I'll add this onto the list! In their words, World Health Organization needs "help translating critical public health messages - not just into different languages - but into different cultures, communities and platforms - reaching everyone, everywhere.

We need to meet people where they are, with a stream of fresh, innovative content which drives home the personal behaviours and societal support needed today. We are equipping you with WHO-provided knowledge and messages to spread."

Any other hackathons missing from this list?

Do suggest them in the comments below and I'll add them onto this list.

As usual, stay safe and healthy!

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