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Community first, technology second
Every idea must name its beneficiary, its gap analysis and its ethical risks before a single line of code is written.
Innovation for Humanity
A national humanitarian technology challenge by IEEE SPS Kerala Chapter — from idea to impact, in three structured phases. Twenty-five interdisciplinary problem statements, six workshop layers, one 36-hour finale.
Hack4Good 2.0 is a structured tech-a-thon: teams are filtered on humanitarian grounding before they build, mentored before they commit, and trained before they prototype. The result is judged on understanding and impact, not just on what compiled by sunrise.
Every idea must name its beneficiary, its gap analysis and its ethical risks before a single line of code is written.
Capacity-building workshops run before the hack, so teams don't start at the same level but do start with the same training.
The BrainStorm Round's Humanitarian Learning Report carries 20–25% of the final score. Learning is evaluated, not assumed.
| Traditional hackathon | Hack4Good 2.0 |
|---|---|
| Idea → Build → Present | Idea → Validation → Mentorship → Technical Training → Humanitarian Awareness → Reflection → Build → Evaluate Impact |
| Judges only the final output | Evaluates understanding, ethics, learning & community impact |
| No structured mentorship | Domain + technical mentors assigned per team |
| All teams start at the same level | Skill equity ensured through capacity-building workshops |
Each phase is a gate. Ideas that clear Phase 1 earn mentorship; teams that clear Phase 2 earn a seat at the three-day offline finale.
Hack4Good 2.0 is open nationally. IEEE membership changes your fee, never your eligibility.
Register as a team. The first member listed is the team lead and primary point of contact for all three phases.
Choose from seven UN SDG tracks at registration. Your problem statement can be locked in later, during Phase 1.
Fees are per participant and depend on IEEE membership status, so a mixed team pays a mixed total — never a flat team price.
The tracks are not independent silos — they are six layers of a single humanitarian cyber-physical system. Every problem statement gives all six layers a real architectural role.
Set A runs 3 hours across two sessions; Set B runs 5.5 hours, weighted towards hands-on build time before the hack begins.
Every challenge is a real humanitarian system rather than a single-track app, and each one requires teams to work across multiple workshop layers rather than a single isolated skill.
| SDG | Track | Problems | Core humanitarian theme |
|---|
A published rubric at every gate — the idea hack, the HackTank pitch and the finale — plus a reflection round that carries real weight.
| Criterion | Weight |
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| Criterion | Weight |
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| Criterion | Weight |
|---|
A four-person team can hold three different membership categories, and your total is the sum of each member's individual fee — never a flat team price.
Six components. Together they force teams to think past "cool tech" and towards a named community with a named problem.
Shortlisted teams pitch before a deliberately mixed panel — IEEE professionals, humanitarian practitioners, industry mentors and academicians — and are pushed on the things that decide whether a project survives contact with the field.
1 Technical Mentor for domain-specific engineering guidance, and 1 Humanitarian / Domain Mentor for community and ethics advisory.
Not just dinner. SDG-themed tables, each hosted by an industry expert, a humanitarian practitioner and an IEEE volunteer leader, with teams rotating every 20–30 minutes.
Dedicated plenary and breakout sessions connect participants directly to the IEEE Humanitarian Technology ecosystem — its programs, its consortium, and its volunteer pathways. What teams learn here feeds straight into their Humanitarian Learning Report.
The first edition proved the structured model works at scale: student communities engage meaningfully with real-world problems when given the right structure, mentorship and humanitarian framing.
| Aspect | Details |
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Registration opens soon for Phase 1. Teams of 2–4, one SDG track, three phases — start deciding which problem you want to take on.