A three-days-long hackathon was part of the campaign titled “Together for the Community”, during which technological solutions for the improvement of communication between the citizens and the local authorities have been selected.

“The Ideathons in Banja Luka and Sarajevo, as well as this weekend’s Hackathon organized within the ReLOaD project, served as a platform for young people, technologists, experts and civil servants for the development of prototype solutions for problems in their communities through technology,” said Steliana Nedera, UNDP Resident Representative in BiH.

Out of eight teams that participated in the Hackathon and presented their conceptual designs to a panel of experts, three ideas were selected. The top-placed of the three ideas will receive full financial support for its development. The third-placed team comes from Banja Luka and presented its idea ​​“Will it”, a mobile application for city public transport. The second-placed team also comes from Banja Luka and attracted the attention of the expert panel with its idea for an application titled “Small interventions”.

The first prize and financial support for the development of the conceptual technological design was awarded to a team consisting of four students of the Fourth Grammar School Ilidza, Sarajevo (original school name: Četvrta gimnazija Ilidža) – Emina Zolota, Elida Arnaut, Nadir Karaman and Benjamin Šišić. They presented their idea ‘’​​Go Green”, a mobile application aimed at educating and raising public awareness about the importance of environmental protection.

“We feel great today after the Hackathon – we won the first place and received support for the development of our application, we are very excited,” said Emina Zolota, a representative of the ‘’Go Green” team.

The goal of the “Together for the Community” campaign is to involve the citizens in decision-making processes and create the preconditions which will allow the citizens to have access to information about work, policies and all other relevant local government activities that affect the community. For this reason, the public call sought innovative technological solutions in order to express the voice of the citizens and help local self-governance units respond more efficiently to requests from their local communities.

The “Together for the Community” campaign is part of the Regional Programme on Local Democracy in the Western Balkans – ReLOaD, an initiative funded by the European Union and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The campaign started with the Ideathon in Banja Luka and continued with the Ideathon in Sarajevo, while the events brought together groups of people with technological ideas for better communication in the local communities.

The campaign ended with a three-days-long Hackathon in Sarajevo, where selected participants further developed and finalized their conceptual designs.