Hackathon Local Challenges
At the beginning of the month we shared with you the global challenges that are being worked on across the different Code for the Kingdom events around the world. Today we want to share with you the challenges that we are setting specifically in the UK Code for the Kingdom hackathon.
Christmas
The Christmas story has been around for a long time, but today it’s being forgotten. In a recent survey it was found that:
- 12 per cent of adults know the nativity story
- More than one-third of children don’t know whose birthday it is
- 51 per cent of people now say the birth of Jesus is irrelevant to their Christmas.
Over the last five years Premier has been leading the Christmas Starts with Christ Campaign which has been seeking to reverse this trend, and show the centrality of Christ to Christmas.
The challenge is to start thinking and building tools or resources to start communicating the Christmas story to a world that has forgotten what Christmas means.
Reacting to Disasters
The first two weeks following a major natural disaster are a crucial time. Many people who have initially survived a quake, flood or hurricane can go on to die of hunger, dehydration or hyperthermia.
Aid agencies rely on untrained local people in each town, village or community to gather as much information from ‘on the ground’ as possible (enumerators).
Existing mobile apps like PoiMapper and Kobo (used by the UN) already exist to document disaster impact at a local level. However Tearfund’s experience shows they are often not simple or quick to set-up for field staff or user-friendly enough to always be usable by local enumerators, who may well be a local farmer or day labourer.
Your challenge is to create a simple and intuitive mobile app to capture geo-location data that will save lives.
Engaging with the Community
Technology has transformed the way that we stay in touch with our families and friends, and also how we go about starting relationships in the first place.
Ben writes:
Technology has implications for the way that we do community as Christians – whether that’s within our churches or not. A lot of these things might be well served by effective websites and existing tools but there could be some untapped potential out there…
The community challenge about looking how we can use technology to serve our local communities- in our churches, in our neighbourhoods, in the buildings we work in, in a global community.
There are still a small number of tickets available for the hackathon next week. You can find out a lot more about it and sign up at kingdomcode.org.uk/hackathon.
