The Internet offers solutions for all kinds of problems. If they are still in the scope of “Where can I order the next Pizza?”, local.ch has the right answers for you. But there are issues bigger than that. And still, the Internet is your place to go: With “Random Hacks of Kindness” (short: RHOK) there is a community that tries to offer solutions for problems that are complex and need more than one bright mind to be solved.

Imagine a website where problems meet their solutions, where you can forward a problem you are aware of and find people that are willing to get that problem solved – based on hacking or, to put it nicely, based on smarter ways to distribute information and gather data in new applications or web solution: That’s what RHOK is about and what local.ch proudly supports during this years Zurich event of the RHOK community. Here our engineer Ivan, member of RHOK, gives a short introduction to the event and examples of the solutions that were “hacked” into existence because people felt the need for them. Feel free to comment and take part.

“Random Hacks of Kindness is a global community of innovation that brings together subject matter experts with volunteer technologists to develop open technology solutions to the global challenges. More than 20 events are planned around the globe, including a local event in Zürich, hosted at the HUB Zürich on 3rd and 4th of December. The aim is to contribute to solutions to numerous problems societies worldwide are facing every day. It is, in short, about “hacking for a better world” – using smart ways of gathering and distributing data to solve issues e.g. related to nature catastrophies. Imagine for instance an earthquake – affected people need to know about water and food supply, medical staff needs to know about the location of wounded people. Bringing those who need information together with the needed information – that’s what we mean when we talk about “hacking for a better world”.

During past RHoK events around the world, volunteers have worked on applications that are already making an impact. Bushfire Connect, a crowd-sourced mapping tool to report bushfires, is being used by local communities across Australia. The Philadelphia Food Trust is promoting PhillySNAP, a mobile application connecting recipients of food stamps to sources of fresh produce. The World Bank is piloting CHASM, software for visualizing landslide risk, in the Caribbean. The Government of Colombia has adopted ATAOLI, a shelter management system built at RHoK Bogota, to manage millions of
people displaced annually by winter storms. Other apps have received support and interest from governments, NGOs and international organizations around the world.

Along with me, my local.ch colleague Dagmar has been an active participant during the current RHoK event in Basel. We helped Caritas Switzerland and Humanity Road to develop tools which will be used
worldwide in everyday activities of these important humanitarian organizations. If you find this interesting why not join us during the next RHoK event in Zürich? You don’t need to be an engineer to take part – everybody with basic problem solving or project management skills is welcome. It’s good to have more minds to think about one issue. So come along and see what we can do.”

For more details, see the Random Hacks of Kindness website at http://www.rhok.org and
official Zürich RHoK event page on http://www.rhok.org/event/zurich-switzerland.