Social Hackathon | 12–14 May 2023

Eleni Fouka
4 min readMay 9, 2023

The Innovation Marathon for Social Innovation

#socialhackathongr

📅12–14 May 2023

➡️ Apply as a contestant now: https://socialhackathon.gr/apply/

Social Hackathon is the 3rd open innovation action of Lidl Hellas in collaboration with the A. C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation aiming at encouraging society, the innovation ecosystem, organizations and businesses to create prototype applications for social innovation and entrepreneurship. The Social Hackathon will take place on May 12–14 in Athens hybridly, both in person and remotely using video-conferencing tools.

The aim of the Social Hackathon is to create prototype applications to support local communities, health, sustainability and entrepreneurship, dialogue and civil society with the help of technological tools and innovative methodologies. The individuals or teams of contestants with the best prototype applications will be selected to participate in a 5-month acceleration program so that they can develop them into products.

This time the goal of the Social Hackathon is to encourage organizations and businesses as well as society to create prototype applications for social innovation and entrepreneurship. The implementation methodology of this initiative contributes to the development of the innovation and entrepreneurship culture and strengthens the Greek innovation ecosystem.

Social Hackathon is open to engineers, developers, economists, analysts, researchers, students, and generally, anyone interested in turning their ideas on issues related to the thematic areas of the hackathon into a complete application.

🎯The Goals:

The main goals of the Social Hackathon are the following:

  • Creating a culture of innovation and partnerships.
  • Supporting youth and innovative entrepreneurship, providing opportunities for young people, combating unemployment.
  • Supporting the local economy, as contestants from all over Greece will be able to participate, who can then create their own business.
  • Highlighting smart and innovative solutions to the issues and challenges related to the thematic areas of the hackathon.
  • Creating an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in the field of social innovation by leveraging new emerging technologies.

🔥The Challenges:

1️⃣ Supporting local communities and economies

  • New business models of sustainable local entrepreneurship in the social sector
  • Applications for supporting alternative forms of (sustainable) tourism, agritourism
  • Digital health, telemedicine, emergency health transport (e.g. medicine etc.) applications
  • Digital applications for educating local citizens on critical social issues

2️⃣ Social Innovation

  • Applications for the reinforcement and support of voluntary actions and participatory financing
  • Applications for the reuse of products and goods as well as for remanufacturing and repairing of products
  • Utilization of technology tools to enable access of vulnerable social groups to basic goods
  • Utilization of digital tools to support ethical trading and fair trade actions
  • Creation of smart educational program solutions for social sustainability within companies and public bodies
  • Applications for data visualization and exploitation of open data for social and other indicators (e.g. rule of law, human rights, safety etc.)
  • Applications around health and disease prevention
  • Utilization of digital tools for the empowerment, support and inclusion of vulnerable groups (e.g. PWDs, refugees, women’s empowerment, low-income people, etc.)

3️⃣ Health Protection

  • Digital tools for balancing work and personal life (mentoring, meditation etc.)
  • Applications for the assessment of risks to the health and safety of workers
  • Applications for the prevention and treatment of occupational accidents, occupational diseases and other work-related health problems
  • Tools for more transparent product labeling to promote healthier choices

4️⃣Sustainability and Fair Business

  • Applications supporting equal employment opportunities and treatment at work
  • Tools for implementing a uniform salary structure based on objective criteria, such as professional experience, specialized knowledge and skills
  • Digital tools for supporting employees (digital training tools, digital cloud collaboration tools, digital communication and idea sharing tools etc.)
  • Responsible Marketing and Social Product Labeling Applications
  • New business models of sustainable green jobs
  • Tools for supporting product certification standards
  • Tools for supporting certification of tacit knowledge and skills in the workplace

5️⃣Engaging in dialogue

  • Transparency, accountability (ESG), and anti-corruption tools — with a focus on social actions for agencies, organizations, and businesses
  • Participatory governance, democracy, transparency and accountability applications for the public and private sectors
  • Applications for enhancing knowledge and networking of new social initiatives

6️⃣Strengthening Civil Society

  • Transparency and accountability tools for gender equality in the private and public sectors
  • Digital tools for internal reporting mechanism in cases of non-compliance with the Code of Conduct

💡 The Social Hackathon is carried out with the support of Lidl Hellas, in collaboration with the A.C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation, under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Development and Investments, with the technological and organizational support of the Greek innovation company Crowdpolicy.

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