Winners of the first Impact Hackathon announced

On 26 May, the Impact Hackathon, organized in collaboration with partners Baltic Innovation Agency, Katalista Ventures, Social Enterprise Estonia and Reach for Change, came to an end.

During two weeks, 12 teams from the Baltic countries went through different workshops and developed their own social entrepreneurship ideas. The teams learned about business plan development, market research, prototyping, marketing, sales and pitching. Each team also had its own mentor to help them focus on the topics that were most critical for them.

The teams emphasized that the hackathon helped to understand how to take a project from idea to business, which is scalable. The next steps for most are to create a first version of a product or service so that they can ask customers for feedback and eventually enter the market.

Transful and Teachers’ Peer Support Circles were the winners of the Hackathon and will have the opportunity to participate in the Impact Valley Accelerator programme. Transful is a memory-techniques platform that helps people acquire new knowledge through making connections. Teachers’ Peer Support Circles provides a community for teachers to share their experiences and daily concerns, so that they are not left emotionally alone and can find help at the earliest opportunity.

In addition, Medic-Talk and the Estonian Dialogue Academy received special mentoring rewards from Social Enterprise Estonia and Reach for Change. Medic-Talk is creating a medical artificial intelligence-based chatbot to improve the language barrier in healthcare among professionals and non-native speakers. The Estonian Dialogue Academy provides training to develop dialogue skills among young people, adults and children.

Impact Hackathon is coming back in autumn 2023. If you are interested in participating, then contact Kerly from Social Enterprise Estonia – kerly@sev.ee.

This hackathon is organized by the Integrated Baltic Ecosystem for Social Innovation (IBESI) project, in collaboration with Social Enteprise Estonia, Baltic Innovation Agency, Katalista Ventures, and Reach for Change.

The project is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

This article was written by Kerly Piirsalu, Social Enterprise Estonia, main organizer of the Impact Hackathon. The article has also been published in Estonian on the Social Enterprise Estonia blog.