About the challenge

The WWU Social Justice Hackathon 2026 will offer students from all colleges and disciplines within Western the opportunity to come together and apply their unique skills - be it in STEM, business, design, interdisciplinary studies, education, Law Diversity and Justice/pre-law focus, community organizing, and/or art -  to focus on creating an ethical, socially responsible technology solution for a real-world challenge. A set of social justice challenges pre-selected from local needs and local non-profits will be available to choose from at the event. The challenges have been picked in part because they allow for the development of tools and approaches that can be prototyped with the limited time allotted, but also because they closely fit the UN’s definition of Access to Justice (2012).  The event is free to attend and food will be provided on-site. No coding experience or background is required to participate.

Requirements

What to Build

You will need to develop a technical submission to your choice of any of the given social and local problems.

Your product shall consist of any combination of source code (that can compile and run on the judges computers, or be accessible via url if a website), a no-code application (created using the provided tools), videos, forms, and documents.

Your team shall also create a presentation that will be presented in front of the panel of judges. The presentation can be in any form your team likes, but a slideshow is preferable. If your team would like to demo the product, it is desirable to pre-record the demo and include it in the presentation. Each team shall pick no more than 2 members to present.

What to Submit

You must submit your final product (and github repository if you wrote source code), the presentation, and a filled-out pitch document.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

1 non-cash prize
TBD
1 winner

Prizes TBD

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

TBD

TBD

Judging Criteria

  • Points awarded for the presentation
    Judges will score presentations based on Deilvery, Content, and Knowledge. For more information, see the Rules Tab. Each category can award 1 to 5 points, out a total of 15.
  • Points awarded for the submssion
    Judges will be provided with a rubric (see the Rules tab) to fill out for each submission. Each submission will be given a score for each category from 1 to 5. Teams can score up to 35 points during the Review Stage.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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