ISLAMABAD: A two-day Islamabad Civic Hackathon — an event organised by Code for Pakistan (CfP) and OPEN Islamabad — concluded Sunday with participants working constantly to develop mobile/web applications and digital tools which address civic and social issues.

The participants were encouraged to develop solutions around five themes: education, health, social change, sustainable city, and poverty and development.

The aim of the event was to encourage civic-minded software developers, professionals, students, designers, data analysts, and innovators to come together to innovate in public services by creating open-source technology solutions and digital tools to address civic and social problems faced by fellow citizens.

Experts in the fields of technology, business, design, health, education, and entrepreneurship mentored participants closely.

“It was inspirational … It makes me feel incredibly hopeful for Pakistan. It’s very easy to be pessimistic, but this is a different story. If these [participants] are all in charge of Pakistan in 10 years, then we won’t have any problems at all,” said Helen Kamal, Education Advisor with Ilm Ideas 2, about her experience as a mentor at the Hackathon.

“I think it's brilliant to see what's happening here at the Civic Hackathon - people coming together, connecting and talking to each other to change Pakistan for good. It's a great effort!” said mentor Saad Hamid, Innovation and Community Lead at Invest2Innovate (i2i).

Code for Pakistan is a non-profit building a non-partisan civic innovation ecosystem to improve quality of life across Pakistan.

Past Hackathons

Code for Pakistan has had positive responses from citizen technologists at previous Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, and Karachi Civic Hackathons which led to the development of useful civic web, mobile, and SMS applications.

One of Code for Pakistan's biggest success stories is 'Savaree', a winning team at the 2014 Lahore Civic Hackathon, recently acquired by Careem.