It's not just a hackathon

"The Algorithm Is Female" hackathon was produced by Hemper together with Code Rush and supervised by Ironhack with a slogan of "tech has no boundaries, age and gender". Getting selected as top 30 was overwhelming for me. TAIF hackathon was different from any other hackathon. Usually in hackathon people go with pre mindset. They have their own team, ideas and pre selected languages but not in TAIF hackathon

Day 1

A sketch on TWFN board

At 8:00 A.M., I entered the venue: softwarica college, there was a list of names along with the team. I was on team 3 (5 members: Dipti, me, Prerana, Sumi, Upasana). Instructors were assigned to each team. The hackathon started with the javascript warm up. After that we were said to write down the communities we had around and select two best. We got a list of at least 10 communities and selected two best communities "Street vendors" and "Harassment Survivors". The best part was we had to go to those communities and actually find out what they were doing and what were their problems and returned back till 2:30 P.M. So quickly we divided ourselves into two teams and went to those communities. I showed interest of going to harassment survivors communities. We had two options: "Maiti Nepal" and "The Women's Foundation Nepal".

Scarfs on TWFN

For "Maiti Nepal" we had to have pre-appointment. We sent mail but it wasnot responded and we could not wait long. So we moved to "The Women's Foundation Nepal". There we could see all the girls busy washing raw clothes, ironing, weaving and so on. We wanted to talk to the girls but the authority said "the girls are not comfortable with talking to people". So we talked with the authority. They gave us the insight of the organization and women working there. We could see numbers of scarfs and dhaka stuffs piled up in the store. As we had very limited time, we returned back. The problems of metropolitan police and season were seen  on our other community-street vendors. We were asked to choose one community. We chose harassment survivor because we could connect to the topic more being a women. Then asked to list all the problems we found and choose one problem we wanted to solve."Lack of platform to sell their products" was selected.

Day2 

The Survivor's Hub

We  were asked to find all the possible solutions for that specific problem. Then asked to pick one that we can solve with technology. So we thought of a solution which not only create a platform for them but it would be a home for them. We decided to build a virtual community hub and named it "The Survivor's Hub". The survivor's hub is not only online buying and selling platform, it provides the educational materials, story sharing, collaborations, donations and so on. We, all of us on team had different technical background so it was hard for us to select one language for coding. But as php was familiar to all of us, we chose php. We first started prototyping then coding. We had to submit prototype by 5:00 PM. By 10:00 PM, we had completed coding. And what remained was to wait for next day, the final day.

Day 3

Cheers to best team work

It was a final presentation day. First we had to present in front of organizing team. We had to prepare 10 min presentation. Then we had to present final presentation of 5 min for the guests. All two presentations went well. The result was on the basis of all 3 days performance. We got very good feedback as the survivor's hub had social and technical impact. At last our team got awarded with "Best Teamwork". But sadly I could not make to top five.

Whatever the result is, it was great experience for me.Thanks to Jyaasa Technologies for unconditional support. I really appreciate Astha Sharma from code rush for her regular support and mentorship. Thanks to Gloria Gubians, Marta Aguilar and Ricardo Boluda. Learned a lot from all of you.

Finally, it turned out not just a hackathon for me but a self realization. Addressing many communities and problems left me questioning myself "Am I doing enough?"