Hackathon hopes to find an end to world hunger

A radical 32-hour hackathon will bring together young, next generation innovators to contribute to finding an end to world hunger. Worldwide, nearly 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition – that’s one in every nine people – with the majority being women and children.

Taking place on the margins of the UN General Assembly on Thursday, 15^th and Friday, 16^th September at the Hilton Midtown Hotel, New York, the Open Data Maker’s Hackathon is part of the GODAN Summit 2016, the largest ever event dedicated to open data in agriculture and nutrition. It is sponsored by the Global Open Data For Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative and powered by Thought for Food and Presidents United to Solve Hunger (PUSH).

The Open Data Maker’s Hackathon is part of GODAN’s Open Data Challenge, which brings together coders, students, designers, marketers, young entrepreneurs, open data enthusiasts, forward-thinkers, and curious minds, to uncover new, innovative ways to unleash the power of open data and solve specific challenges in agriculture and nutrition, to enable policy makers, farmers and the open data community to make significant steps forward in the release, management and use of open data.

Hackers, in the form of current university students and/or entrepreneurs aged 18-26 years old, will come together in an endurance challenge of creating products and services for a beneficial purpose. They will build teams and develop concepts and prototypes for products or services that respond to the challenge question: how we can achieve better utilisation, collection, and accessibility of open data on agriculture and nutrition to improve our food system, ensure food security and ultimately end world hunger.

The Open Data Maker’s Hackathon seeks solutions that must fit into one of the following categories:

1. Improve growing plant innovations: Use open data to improve how and where we grow our food
2. Empower the crowd: Use open data to improve how we leverage the crowd’s actions and knowledge to create a better food system
3. Improve nutrition and health: Use open data to improve how we track, make available, and improve nutrition in our daily diets
4. Deliver climate smart agriculture: Use open data to improve agriculture’s resilience in the face of a changing climate
5. Meet the protein frontier: Use open data to improve how we address the growing demand for protein, and the opportunity for more sustainable and alternative proteins

The teams with the most pioneering and disruptive ideas will be presented with incredible prizes at an award ceremony on Friday, 16^th September. Winning teams will receive the chance to gain access to the GODAN Mentoring Program, powered by Thought For Food, where they will receive business mentorship and guidance on building their concept. In addition and as a result of successful completion of the GODAN Mentoring Program, teams will join the GODAN Challenge finalists in competing for the grand finale prize of the GODAN Global Open Data Challenge of $5000 and a trip to an international food security summit in 2017.

All participants of the Open Data Maker’s Hackathon will be granted free access to the GODAN Summit 2016 which brings together high level world leaders, researchers, farmers, students and others – public, private and non-profit – including over 330 GODAN partners. These include the Governments of the United States, Kenya, and the United Kingdom, ONE campaign, and Presidents United to Solve Hunger (PUSH). All will unite to collaborate on agriculture and nutrition data openness.

Andre Laperriere, spokesperson for GODAN, said: “Open data is key to innovation in agriculture and nutrition, and what better way to find a solution than to call on our next generation of innovators? We have no doubt that this pioneering event will result in advancement towards ending hunger, whilst also creating new partnerships and bringing awareness to the GODAN initiative.”

A rapidly growing initiative, GODAN is convinced that the solution to Zero Hunger lies within existing, but often unavailable, agriculture and nutrition data. GODAN’s goal is to make all agriculture and nutrition data open – available, accessible and usable – for better policy and decision making to ensure no one goes to bed hungry.

The Open Data Maker’s Hackathon begins on Thursday, 15^th September 2016 at GODAN Summit 2016 at Hilton Midtown Hotel, New York. Innovators interested in participating can register here to receive a code allowing them free access. Spaces are limited so register soon.