Santa Clara U Students Code for Humanity

come up with apps to help two organizations serving the poorest people. Santa Clara University’s Association for Computing Machinery chapter held its third annual hackathon, “Hack for Humanity.”

The 24-hour event brought together participants from area colleges studying not just computer science or engineering but also business, biotech, communications and graphic design. Students worked individually or in teams of four to develop applications for either of two recipients.

One is Catholic Charities, where coders were encouraged to improve one of its many services and programs for “very low income people.” For example, the students could come up with apps for improving the organization’s existing job skills training, immigration test training or nutrition information programs.

The other is VillageTech, a company that has created Looma, a low-power, affordable portable computer and projector box for classroom use in schools in developing countries. There, the hackers are supposed to come up with apps for use by students in Nepal, such as creating a content management and navigation system, to build an on-screen keyboard, to add to the maps available for Looma, to improve the speech capability, to create a tool for managing the webcam and related functions.