Santa Clara University is doing more to help those in need than simply collecting can goods. Its upcoming hackathon, bringing together students from local colleges and universities, is intended to result in a homeless app that will address a range of challenges facing the homeless.
Hack for the Homeless, Santa Clara University’s charitable 24-hour hackathon, is scheduled to take place from Feb. 28 to March 1 at SCU’s Kennedy Commons. The effort is entirely student led, from organizing to recruiting, according to the SCU newsletter.
Students will help develop Mobile4All, a program from the nonprofit Community Technology Alliance that helps users find services, food and shelter. The hackathon’s focus is to code mobile apps that can be used by homeless individuals.
In the year prior, there were 50 student participants, including students from Santa Clara and San Jose State University. But now, with the hackathon in its second year, organizers set out to expand participation by inviting students from other schools in the Bay Area.
While associate professor Silvia Figueira acknowledged that it may seem “counterintuitive” that the homeless would have phones, she said a number of services provide or help pay for phones as they increasingly become a necessity of modern life.
Code written by student hackers is donated to the university, which then gives the code to an interested nonprofit, according to the press release.
Natalie Linnell, a lecturer in the mathematics and computer science department at SCU, said students are able to gain experience that classrooms do not offer.
“One of the things that employers are looking for is experience working on projects that are larger than some of the things we do in a lot of classwork,” she said in the press release.
Last year, the first place prize for the best code was $1,000. Judges look at criteria like user interface, functionality and level of difficulty when choosing the winner.
