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Estonian President makes a global call to action: join with online hackathon community to stand against coronavirus 

Published
20. Mar 2020
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Last weekend Accelerate Estonia and Garage48 organized an online hackathon, that has become a significant international success story. More than 1100 people from over 20 countries and 14 timezones gathered to develop solutions to help Estonia emerge from the coronavirus crisis and create competitive advantages for the post-crisis period. Now, many countries like Lithuania, Poland, Finland, India, Latvia, Ukraine, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom and so on, are organizing an online hackathon as well. 

According to Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, organizing an online hackathon demonstrates the attitude of Estonians, who at difficult times do not lose their heads but start working on solutions. “In difficult times we have always two options: remain seated when the ground is burning or start searching for solutions. We chose the last option! I appeal to the international community to call you up to join our initiative and start working on finding and creating solutions, for the reason to minimize coronavirus’ socio-economic impact on our lives,” says President Kaljulaid. 

“Coronavirus has a strong impact on our health and socio-economic environment. Now, when the crisis shows our weak points out, it’s important that the public and private sector join their forces to start developing innovative ways to leave from the forced situation upright. Bringing together the brightest minds that are willing to be part of finding and creating the solutions, is the best start to building our future for the post-crisis’ period,” says President Kaljulaid and adds, that only working together helps us create a stronger future for the international community.

President Kersti Kaljulaid says that startup-government collaboration is in the DNA of our Estonian digital society, which has been developed in close collaboration with the technology companies for more than 20 years by now. “With around 1000 startups, Estonia is among the top countries with startup per capita. In terms of startup regulation, Estonia is the best in the world according to a study by Index Ventures in late 2018. This asset is now rapidly used to turn the crisis into economic opportunities,” she adds. 

Garage48 and Accelerate Estonia are actively sharing their experiences with other countries looking to organize a similar online hackathon. So grab the opportunity and start working! Estonia selected the best 5 teams that got an investment to realize their idea and accelerate its potential. The selected ideas are very different from each other, starting from breathing apparatus solution and medical volunteer management database and ending the line with workforce sharing platform, that connects B2B for the temporary workforce, which helps people find temporary jobs when they have left to unknown about their jobs due to the coronavirus crisis.

Accelerate Estonia and Garage48 have created the Hack the Crisis Global Community landing page (link) to centralize all the local events support for all the new organizers. Keep yourself informed and register your online hackathon in the page. The team will share you all the information that you need to build up a strong online hackathon event. Also, Accelerate Estonia and Garage48 are organizing a global hackathon event that is going to take place in two weeks.