Thousands of “hackers for good” build applications for humanity

Earlier this month, thousands of “hackers for good” gathered in more than 19 dissimilar global locations—from Berlin to Nairobi, and Sydney to Sao Paulo—to contribute in Random Hacks of Kindness #3. These teams are now off and running, working with NGO and government advisors to end their applications for humanity.

In partnership with Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank, we founded RHoK in 2009 to build and support a community creating open basis technology for crisis response. At RHoK #3, we prolonged the mandate to comprise climate change, and we also recently announced that we’re broadening the scope in the prospect to tackle any development challenges.

Of the more than 75 solutions submitted for judging at this year’s global events, many are already on their way to making a dissimilarity around the world. The UN, in partnership with the Colombia government, is allowing for adopting the shelter management system developed at RHoK Bogota to aid the 3 million victims of winter flooding in South America. Of the nine hacks submitted for judging at RHoK Sao Paulo, two are previously in use and two others may be further urbanized and incorporated into the restructuring of the National Weather Service. The winning application at RHoK Philadelphia, developed in reply to a problem proposed by the World Bank Water group, is set for further development at the WaterHackathon, RHoK's first community-sponsored occasion, later this year.

At the RHoK Silicon Valley event at Google’s Mountain View campus, we chosen three winners:

* SMS Person Finder enables anyone with a phone to interrelate with Person Finder, a software application that Google built to help people attach with their loved ones following a disaster. The Google Crisis Response team is working with this group to put together their application into future Google Person Finder deployments

* Hey Cycle makes it easier for people to reuse and recycle items by setting up email alerts when free items that they’re looking for are entered on freecycle.org

* FoodMovr connects people with overload food to others who need it through a simple live application

We’re proud to be one of the founding partners and continuing sponsors of Random Hacks of Kindness and look forward to seeing these application make a difference. Stay tuned for future RHoK events, and go after the progress of the community at RHoK.org.