Step. and GO! Turn your challenges into concrete actions.

From proposing a challenge to following up on projects: Deploying and recovering projects through the Hackathon-Training Participatory Science for Impact

Submit a challenge and give the Hackathon projects a future

From a challenge encountered in the field to a concrete project

Is your organization, activity or territory facing an issue, and are you looking for new ways to address it?

As part of this Participatory Science and Research for Impact Hackathon, partner organizations can submit a challenge to participants: a real issue, arising from their needs or activities, that a team will work on for the duration of the Hackathon.

The goal: to bring about, together with the participants, a concrete, structured participatory science project that can be deployed directly at the end of the Hackathon.

You bring a problem or a question. Participants draw on their skills, participatory science and collective intelligence to build an answer.

What is a “challenge”?

A challenge given to hackathon participants is a concrete issue faced by your organization for which you want to explore a new solution.

It can, for example, relate to data collection, awareness-raising, education, biodiversity, tourism, citizen mobilization, or the design of a participatory science initiative.

The challenge does not need to be framed as an already-defined solution. On the contrary, the idea is to give participants enough context to understand your need and leave them free to imagine different answers.

To submit a challenge, you simply need to specify:

  • The problem or issue your organization is facing;
  • Why this issue matters for your activity or your territory;
  • What you would like to be able to do or obtain at the end of the Hackathon;
  • Any existing constraints or resources to take into account;
  • The people, audiences or stakeholders who could be affected by the future project.
Challenge proposal form

For five days, your challenge becomes a project

Once the challenges have been presented, participants can choose the issues they would like to contribute to.

For five days, they work as a team, supported by mentors and resource persons, to turn the challenge into a participatory science project.

The project is built up step by step, taking into account several dimensions: its value for the territory, the audiences to mobilize, the ways of participating, the resources required and the conditions needed to carry it out.

The aim is therefore not simply to produce an idea, but to move forward a project that your organization could potentially take over after the Hackathon.

What does your organization get?

At the end of the five days, organizations that submitted a challenge can take away a participatory science project built around their issue.

The project is designed to be continued or adapted after the Hackathon, in particular by the organization behind the challenge or by other interested stakeholders.

The final showcase allows the projects to be presented to funders, organizations able to implement them, and stakeholders who can contribute to their development.

This event also makes it possible to identify shared interests between project leaders and the organizations that could support or take over the projects.

A showcase that looks beyond the idea

The technical aspects of the scientific project are addressed after the hackathon with research partners. The hackathon focuses primarily on educational design and the economic model (free access, contribution to costs, grants, etc.). For these reasons, the final evaluation of the projects at the showcase will pay particular attention to the project’s scope and its ability to become a concrete action:

Educational approach

Does the project genuinely make it possible to involve different audiences in a participatory science approach?

Feasibility

Can the project be implemented under realistic conditions? Is it simple and user-friendly enough to be run and used in the field?

Economic model

What could the operating arrangements of the project be: free access, participant contributions, volunteering, funding or another model?

These elements make it possible to better assess the conditions needed for the project to continue after the Hackathon.

And after the Hackathon?

The Hackathon does not end with the showcase.

The follow-up is above all aimed at fostering connections between the projects and the stakeholders likely to carry them forward.

After the showcase, the mutual interests identified between project leaders and partners can be formalized. Exchanges are then maintained to facilitate the relationship and, where possible, to help remove the first obstacles encountered.

Meetings may also be organized several months after the Hackathon to bring together project leaders and interested partners again.

The Hackathon’s follow-up ends when the project is taken over by an operating partner. The implementation and the measurement of the project’s results are then the responsibility of the stakeholders who deploy it.

Impact-tracking tools can nevertheless be made available to them to support them at this stage.

Two levels of impact

The Hackathon distinguishes two levels of impact.

Direct impact

This corresponds to what happens during the Hackathon and at its conclusion: participants’ capacity building, development of a civic mindset, acquisition of new skills, or the construction of economic models for the projects.

Induced impact

This corresponds to the effects produced once the projects have been deployed by operating partners: contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals, creation of economic activities, or positive spin-offs for the territories.

The Hackathon can support the connection and handover of projects, but it does not replace the organizations that subsequently take charge of their implementation and follow-up.

Partners at both the entry and the exit

Organizations can get involved at two points in the Hackathon:

At the entry

, by bringing a real challenge arising from their activity or their territory.

At the exit

, by taking an interest in the projects developed and possibly contributing to their implementation.

This diversity of stakeholders — associations, leisure centers, research organizations, tourism players, public institutions, international funds or companies — helps bring the projects closer to the realities on the ground and to the stakeholders likely to carry them forward.

Do you have an issue you’d like us to work on?

Does your organization face a concrete problem that you would like to submit to a multidisciplinary team?

Submit your challenge to the "Waves of Change" Hackathon.

If you already know you would like your challenge to feed into the hackathon, make your submission using this form:

Fiche proposition de défi

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