According to TheNextWeb, the Vatican recently held its first hackathon event. The event invited 120 students from all over the world, from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, to solve problems in three ambitious areas; migrants and refugees, social inclusion, and interfaith dialogue.
In the interview, the event’s co-organizers, Father Jakub Floriekwiez and Father Eric Salobir, emphasized that their goal is not to promote the Catholic Church. What they really want is to inspire and support young people to help spread their core values, not the religion itself. Salobir said: “The point is to be useful, that’s why we chose those issues, to be impactful.”
The @pontifex Blessing from the Window of the first-ever #Vhacks2018 @vhacks2018 #Hackathon. Congrats to the Students, Mentors, Sponsors, Organizers and especially @frEricOP for your leadership. @salesforce @Google @Microsoft @SalesforceOrg #diversity #inclusion #EqualityForAll pic.twitter.com/6zKpZcbxdG
— Charlie Isaacs (@charlieisaacs) March 11, 2018
Some of the students who participated in the hackathon competition said that the biggest difference between this competition and other competitions is not only the environment of the competition, the proportion of men and women contestants who are very close to each other, but also the top 60 mentors, and more importantly, the creation of income-generating applications. The program shifts to applications that focus on improving humanity.
For example, the winners of the hackathon competition developed an application that helps refugees prove their reliability to employers, a crowdfunding platform for homeless people, and a connected organization and volunteer to achieve social welfare. platform. In this sense, the hackathon is a good example of how religion can play a role from a non-psychic point of view. This approach is very suitable for the function of the modern technology world.
