The UK and Irish charity sector stands at a pivotal moment. While serving millions daily, many organisations struggle to harness modern technology's power. Through the Breaking Barriers Challenge, your organisation can be part of a transformation that's reshaping how charities serve their communities.
Charities face funding instability, resource constraints, and outreach challenges. Your innovative solutions can make a real difference!
Join us to learn from AI and ML experts, develop cutting-edge tools for charities, enhance service delivery and impact measurement, and create a resilient nonprofit ecosystem. This isn't just a hackathon—it's a pivotal moment to reshape the future of charitable work. Your participation can change lives and foster a more equitable society.
Sign up today and be part of the movement driving sustainable change in the UK and Ireland charity sector!
Your technical experts will work directly with charities in three critical areas:
- Healthcare Innovation: Revolutionising patient care systems and healthcare accessibility for millions who rely on charitable healthcare services.
- Sustainability Solutions: Creating practical environmental solutions that help charities reduce their carbon footprint while expanding their impact.
- Community Empowerment: Developing digital tools that enhance educational access, improve social services, and strengthen community support networks.
The AWS Breaking Barriers Challenge is a groundbreaking three-day social impact innovation event, simultaneously hosted in three cities across the UK & Ireland, that combines a GenAI Hackathon with a comprehensive Social Impact Summit. This pioneering initiative brings together technical workshops, masterclasses, and vibrant networking opportunities, all focused on creating practical, deployable solutions for pressing social challenges using AWS technology. The event particularly emphasizes GenAI applications and their potential for social impact.
Making history as UKI's first multi-city GenAI hackathon, the AWS Breaking Barriers Challenge unites tech communities across the UK and Ireland. This unique three-day experience transforms traditional hackathons by combining cross-regional collaboration, hands-on AI development, and social innovation to create technology solutions that matter.
This event stands apart through its innovative multi-city simultaneous execution with real-time collaboration across London, Manchester, and Dublin. What truly sets it apart is our commitment to taking winning solutions from concept to reality through comprehensive AWS implementation support. The event goes beyond traditional hackathons by providing long-term technical guidance and featuring executive sponsorship from AWS and Amazon leadership. Our focus remains firmly on creating practical, deployable solutions that can make a real difference in the charitable sector.
We're seeking a diverse mix of professionals and students who can bring different perspectives and skills to this challenge. This includes software developers, engineers, data scientists, AI specialists, UX/UI designers, and project managers. We're also actively seeking charity sector professionals, business analysts, final-year university students, faculty members, and representatives from AWS customers and partners. This diversity ensures rich, multifaceted approaches to solving social challenges.
Each team consists of 8-10 carefully selected members to ensure a balanced mix of skills and perspectives. Teams typically include two to three technical experts from AWS partners, one or two charity representatives who bring deep understanding of social challenges, two to three industry professionals, one or two university participants, and dedicated AWS technical support staff. This structure ensures teams have the necessary technical expertise while maintaining strong connections to real-world social impact needs.
Participants will have comprehensive access to AWS's full suite of AI/ML services, including Amazon Bedrock, Q Developer, SageMaker, and Lambda, along with additional services based on project requirements. Technical support is robust and includes on-site AWS Solutions Architects at each location, and office hours with AWS experts from our partners. We also provide extensive technical documentation, tutorials, and pre-event training materials to ensure all participants can maximize their use of AWS technologies.
The event unfolds over three intensive days. Day One focuses on problem definition and solution design, beginning with registration and an inspiring opening keynote, followed by in-depth problem exploration sessions with charity partners. The afternoon features AWS technical workshops and team formation activities.
Day Two is dedicated to development and testing, with focused development sprints throughout the day. Teams receive regular check-ins and continuous technical support, with access to both AWS and partner Solution Architects, AI/ML experts and charity representatives to feedback on the solution.
The final day centers on refinement and presentation, starting with solution refinement in the morning, followed by local presentations and the exciting cross-city final presentations. The day concludes with judging deliberation and a celebratory awards ceremony and closing reception.
Solutions are evaluated through a comprehensive framework that considers technical innovation (25%), social impact potential (25%), feasibility and sustainability (20%), scalability (15%), and presentation quality (15%). The winning team will receive an extensive support package including AWS technical expertise, implementation assistance from AWS partners, marketing and PR support, and access to AWS's global charity network. Most importantly, AWS will provide dedicated resources and support to help transform the winning solution from prototype to production, ensuring it creates lasting impact in the real world. This is complemented by ongoing mentorship and technical guidance to ensure long-term success.