3 projects announced as winners of the first online hackathon in Kyrgyzstan, organized by UNDP and UNICEF, with the support of the Spotlight Initiative to end violence against women and girls.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), together with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), with the support of the EU-UN joint Spotlight Initiative to end violence against women and girls, conducted the first Online Hackathon in Kyrgyzstan. The initiative, organized 6-7 of May, brought together programmers, designers, and representatives of crisis centers in one online platform to develop effective digital solutions to mitigate the effects of quarantine on children, women, youth and people with disabilities. Within 48 hours, 53 developers worked on 18 IT products that will help children and women in difficult life situations.

The teams worked on 4 thematic issues: violence against women, violence against children, children of migrants and the safety of people with disabilities.

“The hackathon is one of the most innovative events of the Kyrgyz IT industry, the entire event was held online. We have many specialists with in-depth IT expertise, so choosing the best teams for the jury was not an easy task. All the projects presented were at a very high level,” commented Aziz Abakirov, a member of the selection committee.

The winners of the online hackathon received financial support for the implementation of their innovative solutions. The remaining participants were able to find like-minded people, gained new knowledge and experience working remotely.

The Hackathon is an opportunity to use creativity and ingenuity to create digital solutions that will help convey the idea that violence is unacceptable.

Winners:

1^st Place - ClickHelp Bot project

The ClickHelp Bot project will help women and youth to recognize signs of domestic violence, as well as connect them with the nearest crisis centers and psychologists. The developers, together with gender experts, created questions based on signs of violence and determined their degree of danger. Each time a user scores a critical number of points, the bot tells the user that he needs to seek help. The telegram bot will also provide information on nearby crisis centers and organizations that can help. You can test the bot via this link.

 “Every year in Kyrgyzstan the number of registered acts of domestic violence is growing, but there are a huge number of cases that are not taken into account, because not all victims are ready to seek help. From the very beginning, we set ourselves the goal of developing a bot that will help at least one woman recognize signs of violence and connect her with people who will support and help. At the hackathon, we realized that no matter how much experience you have in programming, what matters  is the desire to help people, ”Anastasia, a member of the team who developed the ClickHelp Bot project, shared her opinion.

Developers: Edil Baiyzbekov, Anastasia Brazhnikova and Dmitry Sukhorukov.

2^nd Place - Burulay project

The goal of the project is to provide solutions to prevent domestic violence on a digital platform: psychologists will develop online guides with recommendations for women who have experienced mental or physical domestic violence; an anonymous general online chat will be available for registered users, where they can share their problems anonymously and help each other morally. You can view the project here.

Developers: Dmitry Novikov and Dastan Alymbekov.

3^rd Place - Smart Jomok project

Smart Jomok is a web service that helps psychologists, teachers, educators and parents to get to know their children better through fairy tales. The new application consists of several types of interactive tales. So, for example, while reading a fairy tale, the child has the opportunity to come up with an ending himself or the child can choose the further plot of the fairy tale. Accordingly, an adult can better understand the child through his story. You can view all types of fairy tales here.

Developers: Bektur Soltobaev, Adilet Nurlanov, Bektur Samat uulu, Aidai Algadaev and Askar Suyunaliev.

What digital solutions did they offer?

As part of the hackathon, in addition to the 3 winners, 15 innovative IT products were developed that will help overcome the difficulties women and children face during quarantine.

1. Korbasym

2. Affordable education

3. Kyrgyz Game

4. Breathe

5. Digital You

6. Weifu Online Assistant

7. Noname from Aikosha

8. SOS

9. Wish card

10. Noname from Jaken

11. The platform of social protection.

12. Online academy for girls

13. BIZ business education

14. I have a right

15. Jarkyn Jasha

Press contacts:

Asipa Altymysheva, UNDP Communications consultant

bolot.asipa@gmail.com

+996 555 080 666