“Make Tech Social” is happening in Eindhoven on September 21st, 22nd and 23rd at Grand Cafe the Color Kitchen. The hackathon proposes five challenges related to the global goals which should be solved by the participants during the event.
The Hack Global Goals platform is bringing together professionals, expats, companies and foundations to promote sustainable development through technological innovation and the engagement of the civil society and private sectors.
“Make Tech Social” is one of the platform’s initiatives, a two and a half days hackathon starting on September 21st followed by two full days of activities when the participants will focus on solving the challenges.
The event which starts at 17:00h on 21st and will close on 17:00h on 23rd, will host 75 participants at the Color Kitchen, based in the High Tech Campus and will give awards to the best final concepts after the groups pitch their ideas.
It is the perfect opportunity to meet like-minded innovators, thinkers, policymakers, entrepreneurs and investors interested in positive social impact through technological innovation.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)?
In September 2015 the 193 UN member states agreed unanimously on 17 goals to foster the sustainable development tackling issues like poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, clean energy, global warming and waste management.
Achieving the targets of the 17 goals demands the mobilization of significant efforts and investments form all the participating members but so far they have not been sufficient.
The goals are interdependent but each of them has individual targets and indicators, totaling 169 targets which should be achieved by 2030 and 304 indicators that help monitoring countries’ progress.
Worldwide Challenge
The UN released in June the SDG report 2018, it indicates progresses in some areas such as the reduction of child mortality which dropped almost 50% and a decrease of extreme poverty, however Nine out of 10 people living in cities still breathe polluted air, land degradation is a threat to the livelihood of more than 1 billion people and worldwide hunger started increasing again. 1
To revert this situation and achieve all goals the UN estimated a necessary investment of US$5 to $7 trillion over the next 15 years. Nevertheless, developing countries show an investment gap of about $2.5 trillion and the investments done so far are one order of magnitude smaller than the expected. 2
Taking Action
Achieving the global goals will only be possible with a strong engagement of the civil society and private sectors.
Therefore, a coalition of companies, start-ups and civil society has created the Hack Global Goals Platform with the aim of bringing talents from all society sectors together to focus on local social and environmental challenges and contribute locally to the achievement of the global goals making use of Eindhoven’s most valuable resources, knowledge of top-technologies, the expertise and the passion for innovation of its inhabitants and professionals, specially the internationals.
Subscribe for the hackathon on hackglobalgoals.com.
For Eindhoven News by Diana Bizarro
