The 2013 Innovation and Development Hackathon, came to a close on the 23rd March after a week of intensive collaboration and innovation. (more...)
In 2013, the Humanitarian Centre will be launching a a year-long focus on Food Security. For the past two years, the Humanitarian Centre has held similar ‘themed years’, on Global Health (2011-2012) and ICT4D (2010-2011), to help build and strengthen a network of individuals and organisations, in Cambridge and beyond, to more effectively address these global challenges. Watch this space for information about our upcoming events–or join our Food Security mailing list, and we’ll send fortnightly news and updates right to your inbox.
“What exactly is a Hackathon?” This is a question that participants in the Innovation & Development Hackathon have answered many times over the past week.
The term hackathon is appropriated from the tech community; it is an event that brings different people together, for a period of intensive collaboration, to “hack” out a solution to a problem, or come up with a new, usable idea or project.
At the Innovation & Development Hackathon, students and professionals work in teams for one (more...)
George Osborne’s budget announcements today, 20th March 2013, have the power to affect people all over the world. The ‘Enough Food for Everyone IF’ campaign wants to make sure that these effects, in the form of foreign aid and a crackdown on tax avoidance, are positive ones.
On Tuesday 19th March, almost 500 ‘Georges’ from across the country–me included–gathered in Parliament Square at 7.30am to begin a morning of mass impersonation. The aim: to capture the attention of the media and (more...)
On Saturday March 16, the Innovation & Development Hackathon kicked off as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. Enterprising students and professionals came together to find innovative new approaches to real development challenges faced by charities, social enterprises, companies and student start ups. The challenges they worked on are below.
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On the 20th March George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, will present his annual budget. This is the coalition’s chance to confirm its commitment to spending 0.7% of national income on aid – an opportunity for the British government to take the lead in the stand against global hunger.
However, the findings of the international development select committee earlier this month have begun to cast aspersions on the integrity of this commitment.
Their report outlines several efficiency (more...)
On March 16th, companies and NGOs team up with enterprising students and professionals for a week-long ‘open innovation’ event to find new approaches to development challenges. The Hackathon ends on 23rd March when teams present their new approaches and awards are given to the innovators with the most promising ideas—chosen by a panel of experts, and by the crowd!
This is the second year the Humanitarian Centre, the Univeristy of Cambridge Office of Public Engagement and Cambridge (more...)
Over the next two months, leading up to the Innovation and Development Hackathon in March, we will explore themes within social enterprise via a series articles and interviews with academics, social entrepreneurs and students. Adopting a critical and cross-disciplinary perspective we hope to gain insight into social enterprise’s potential. What is the role of social enterprise in the economic and social development of less developed countries? In this context, what are the impacts of social (more...)
Last Friday representatives from charities Christian Aid and Partners for Change Ethiopia joined the Humanitarian Centre to host the local launch of the IF campaign. Chair of the Humanitarian Centre, Steve Jones, addressed a packed Great St Mary’s Church on the problems of world hunger that the campaign aims to reduce.
“the leading charities in the UK have come together as a major coalition, and it requires all of our support. There is enough food for everyone, so why is it that one in (more...)
Many thanks to everyone who attended meetings to help shape the agenda for the Humanitarian Centre’s 2013 focus on poverty and environmental sustainability.
Based on the feedback from the planning meetings, we propose to focus on these issues through the lens of food security. With ‘environmental sustainability’ meaning so many different things to so many different people, there was a strong sense that the theme year should have a more targeted approach. Food security was proposed at (more...)
