After months of coding away during the Sanitation Hack@Home challenge, 10 teams of innovators were selected as Finalists. The Hack@Home challenge is part of the Sanitation Hackathon, a year-long process that included a global event in December where creative programmers developed apps geared at addressing the global sanitation challenges, namely the 2.5 billion people who lack access to adequate sanitation.
The Sanitation Hackathon serves as an example of how technological innovation from the grassroots level can help us better define, design, and implement solutions to some of the key global development challenges. By fostering a collaborative environment for local developers to discuss problem statements affecting their society, initiatives such as this one hope to surface creative yet practical solutions to real-world challenges enabled by technology.
More information about each app, the teams, and the technology used can be found here. Below is the list of the top 10 finalists (in alphabetical order):
Empowering Girls monitors girls’ school attendance to track appropriate sanitation facilities.
LION Sync provides decision-makers with access to real-time data online and offline.
LooRewards promotes sanitary behavior by rewarding safe sanitation practices.
mSchool monitors the status of water and sanitation infrastructure in schools.
mSewage crowdsources the identification of open defecation sites and sewage outflows.
San-Trac reminds users about hygienic practices and gathers real-time data for trend analysis.
Sanitation Investment Tracker tracks investment and expenditure in sanitation at the household level.
SunClean teaches sanitary and hygienic behavior through games to children.
Taarifa enables citizen reporting and tracks decision-makers’ feedback.
Toilight finds toilets in a smart and easy way.
San-Trac also won the People’s Choice Award, which was calculated by Facebook votes and Twitter mentions of the competing teams’ name and the Twitter hashtag #SanHack.
The Grand Prize Award winners will be announced on April 19, on the eve of the World Bank’s Spring Meetings.
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