The Power of Utilizing Hackathons For Climate Action
Sanjana Paul is co-founder of The Earth Hacks Foundation.
By Sanjana Paul
I focus on shifting attitudes in the technology space by harnessing hackathons as a form of climate action through the organization I co-founded and lead, Earth Hacks.
At Earth Hacks, we believe that hackathons provide a unique platform for creative problem-solving and collaboration, which are essential tools for combating environmental and climate issues. Hackathons are historically programming contests, with roots in the open-source software movement.
They have since grown into a mainstay on college campuses worldwide as a powerful movement for experiential education and community building. Through our collaborative, community-centric hackathons, Earth Hacks offers participants the opportunity to work on a variety of projects, ranging from career-changing educational data visualization projects to opportunities to join service-learning hackathons and fill in the gaps on existing projects and campaigns in the real world.
Earth Hacks' focus on environmental justice and technology education, as well as our commitment to curating supportive, inclusive, interdisciplinary environmental hackathons, is helping to shift attitudes and behaviors towards more environmentally just practices, including thinking critically about the need for technology to be centered in solutions, questioning whose ideas are highlighted on the global stage, and being aware of power dynamics and injustices upheld by some technological practices.
Through our work so far, we have hosted or supported over 50 hackathons with participants from every inhabited continent in the world attending, with hackathon themes ranging from fast fashion to data science and everything in between, producing social media campaigns for environmental justice legislation, geospatial dashboards for wildlife conservation organizations, hardware designs for environmental sensors that help park rangers combat deforestation, and maps of urban heat islands for local climate advocacy.
““At Earth Hacks, we believe that hackathons provide a unique platform for creative problem-solving and collaboration, which are essential tools for combating environmental and climate issues.” — Sanjana Paul, co-founder of The Earth Hacks Foundation #PowerToChangeStories”
Sanjana Paul is co-founder of The Earth Hacks Foundation and a member of the first-ever Tom’s of Maine Incubator, a program helping the next generation of BIPOC leaders drive environmental solutions. https://www.tomsofmaine.com/incubator ; https://www.instagram.com/earthhacksorg/ ; https://earthhacks.io/