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💡 Active projects and challenges as of 20.03.2026 10:00.
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NeuroBin: Smart Waste Segregator
NeuroBin is an Edge-AI powered smart waste segregator that automatically sorts waste into biodegradable (food scraps, paper, garden waste) and non-biodegradable (plastics, metals, packaging) categories using a CNN model on Raspberry Pi 4.It integrates HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensors for object detection, MG90S servo motors for precise sorting, and achieves ~12 items/min throughput with <500ms latency, reducing manual sorting and contamination.Targeting UN SDG 11, NeuroBin cuts municipal overflow costs with scalable hardware sales (₹35–45K/unit, 65–70% margin) and SaaS analytics for waste insights.
FundingNavigator – Smart Matching for Social Funding in Switzerland
Social workers and individuals in financial distress spend hours manually searching through PDF directories to find the right foundation for their specific situation – only to face rejection because the foundation's purpose didn't match their case. The ZHAW "Fonds und Stiftungsverzeichnis" alone lists 188 foundations for the Canton of Zurich, each with specific eligibility criteria regarding target group, nationality, residency, type of need, and application process. Mismatched applications waste time for both applicants and foundations, which report being overwhelmed by unsuitable requests. FundingNavigator turns this static knowledge into an intelligent matching tool. Users answer a guided set of questions – Who are you? (individual, social worker, organization) What do you need? (emergency funds, education, project grant) How urgent is it? – and the system matches them to the most suitable funding sources. But we go beyond classical foundation directories: FundingNavigator integrates the full spectrum of social financing options, including crowdfunding platforms, sharing economy resources, and public support programs, following the holistic approach of the ZHAW directory. The prototype could use a RAG-based architecture (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) with the structured foundation data as its knowledge base. Core features for the hackathon: (1) guided needs assessment, (2) intelligent matching with ranked results, (3) urgency-based filtering (decision timelines vary from weeks to months), (4) direct links to application forms or auto-generated template letters. The architecture is designed to scale beyond Zurich to other cantons and national-level foundations. Data source: ZHAW Fonds- und Stiftungsverzeichnis 2024/25 (publicly available, 188 foundations + supplementary financing chapters). Impact: Fewer mismatched applications, faster access to support for people in crisis, reduced administrative burden on foundations, and a scalable model for all of Switzerland.
AI-assisted categorization and summarization of court rulings
The Swiss Refugee Council advocates for the protection and rights of refugees. If an asylum application is rejected by the Swiss authorities, the asylum seeker can appeal against the decision at the Federal Administrative Court. The court’s decisions are published in a publicly available database — essentially a collection of PDFs with some metadata. The Swiss Refugee Council identifies, categorizes and summarizes the relevant decisions to create an overview that assists legal representatives in their work. Currently, this overview is created manually. This is time-consuming because the court publishes around 100 decisions each week. The aim of this challenge is to develop an AI-based tool to automate this process. This tool would extract useful information such as the number of judges involved in the ruling, the asylum seeker's country of origin, and the outcome of the decision using LLMs or other ML models. In addition, the tool should create a summary of the court ruling that will help lawyers to quickly understand the essentials of a case.
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AI-Powered Social Storytelling for Donation Campaigns
More than every sixth person in Switzerland lives at risk of poverty. Yet the issue remains invisible and taboo. Caritas reaches its existing, loyal donor base - but struggles to connect with younger, digitally native audiences who spend their time on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Traditional fundraising campaigns are expensive to produce, require professional copywriters, designers and translators, and often fail to reach with new audiences. In today's environment - rising cost of living, social media fatigue, short attention spans - Caritas needs fresh, authentic and scalable ways to tell the stories of people in poverty and inspire donations. Behind every counseling session is a human story: a single mother who cannot afford heating, an elderly man choosing between food and medication. These are true stories - and when told well, they inspire donations. But producing multi-language, platform-native content (e.g., Instagram carousels or TikTok videos) requires resources most NGOs lack. Caritas needs a smarter way to bring these stories to the people who have never heard them. An AI-powered solution could close this gap - turning a single-story prompt into a campaign in minutes. Goal: (1) An AI application that takes a true, anonymized story of someone living in poverty in Switzerland as input and generates a ready-to-publish, donation-inspiring social media campaign. (2) The system produce at least one of the following: a short video ready to post on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, or an Instagram carousel. (3) Creative direction is open: for example, a comic strip depicting a day in someone's life can be delivered as swipeable carousel panels or as a short animated video. (4) The output always includes a clear donation call-to-action, a platform-native caption, and relevant hashtags. Content must be generated in at least one of the following: German, French, Italian or English. (5) The solution should be fast, ethical, usable by non-technical Caritas staff.
City of Biel/Bienne
Community in a Box
Thousands of urban book boxes, sharing shelves, and swap corners exist across our cities, built by citizens, for citizens, with no budget and no coordination. Yet each one is an island. Nobody knows what's inside, who maintains them, or what's happening nearby. Community in a Box connects these objects into a living neighborhood network. Scan a box, find a book, discover a local event, offer a skill, meet a neighbor. No app, no platform, no friction. Just a sticker, a code, and the street around you. The first step toward cities that can see and strengthen what their citizens have already built.
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Digital Asylum Glossary
The existing HEKS Asylum Guide, which is currently sold as a printed booklet, is also to be made available in digital form. The Asylum Guide provides a concise and accessible overview of the Swiss asylum system and is used by, amongst others, advice centres, students and public authorities. A digital version will allow for access at any time, with searchable and user-friendly functionality. Furthermore, updates resulting from legislative changes can be implemented more quickly, ensuring that the content remains up to date at all times. The aim is to simplify access to knowledge in the field of asylum and to make the work of users easier.
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L'IA comme chance de participation non comme risque (EmSol Barrier Killer)
Develop tools that enable a non-teaching team to create audiovisual teaching materials tailored to people with limited education, with a view to enhancing their professional skills. Identify AI tools that can help overcome language or health barriers to support reintegration and everyday life. Mettre en place des outils qui permettent à une équipe non pédagogique de développer du matériel pédagogique audiovisuel adapté aux personnes peu scolarisées afin de renforcer leur qualification professionnelle. Identifier des outils d'IA permettant de surmonter les obstacles linguistiques ou de santé pour favoriser la réinsertion et la vie quotidienne.
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Modèle participatif de gouvernance pour la primo-information
Les informations utiles à l’intégration sont produites par une grande diversité d’acteurs (institutions publiques, associations, services sociaux, organismes de formation). Cette multiplicité rend difficile la mise à jour, la fiabilité et la traçabilité des contenus, ce qui limite leur utilisation par les bénéficiaires et les professionnels. Ce défi propose de concevoir un prototype de système de gouvernance collaborative permettant de structurer la production, la validation et l’actualisation des informations d’intégration. Vous explorerez la création de workflows multi-acteurs, de mécanismes de validation, de systèmes de traçabilité des sources et d’indicateurs de fiabilité des contenus. Le projet pourra inclure des outils facilitant la contribution des acteurs de terrain, la détection automatique d’informations obsolètes et la visualisation des réseaux d’acteurs impliqués. L’objectif est de proposer un modèle reproductible permettant d’assurer la qualité, la pérennité et la transparence des contenus diffusés via une plateforme d’intégration.
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Moteur intelligent d’orientation personnalisée pour les primo-arrivants
Les migrants nouvellement arrivés sont confrontés à une grande quantité d’informations fragmentées, souvent difficiles à relier à leur situation personnelle. Cette complexité peut ralentir leur intégration et rendre l’accompagnement plus difficile pour les professionnels du terrain. Ce défi consiste à concevoir un prototype de moteur d’orientation personnalisée capable d’analyser le profil et les besoins d’un utilisateur afin de recommander des parcours d’intégration adaptés. Le système devra prendre en compte plusieurs dimensions telles que la langue, le niveau de formation, la situation administrative, l’expérience professionnelle ou les objectifs d’intégration. Le hackathon explorera différentes approches technologiques, comme des modèles de recommandation explicables, des arbres décisionnels interactifs ou des assistants conversationnels. Une attention particulière sera portée à la transparence des recommandations et à l’accessibilité pour des publics à faible littératie numérique. L’objectif est de démontrer comment un outil numérique peut faciliter l’autonomisation des bénéficiaires et soutenir le travail des professionnels.
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Offood Student Edition — Ensuring Every Student Has Time to Eat
Offood is an existing platform that allows users to reserve a table and pre-order their meals in restaurants, helping them avoid waiting and make better use of their lunch break. With Offood Student Edition, we would like to explore how this concept could be adapted specifically for students. Students often have limited lunch breaks and face long queues in campus cafeterias or nearby restaurants, which can prevent them from accessing proper meals or force them to rush. The challenge is to prototype a dedicated “student workspace” experience within Offood that would allow students to easily access exclusive student menus, pre-order their meals, and pick them up without waiting. We invite participants to imagine and prototype: • the student user experience • how students access and use this workspace • how restaurants could provide dedicated student offers • and how schools could be integrated into the system The goal is not to build a full production system, but to explore the concept, user flows, and overall experience, and help shape the future of Offood Student Edition.
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Plateforme de mentoring professionnel senior
Créer une plateforme en Suisse permettant aux personnes retraitées expérimentées de proposer des prestations de conseil, mentorat ou accompagnement à des entrepreneurs, dirigeants ou particuliers en transition professionnelle. L’objectif est double : valoriser un capital d’expérience encore actif et générer un revenu complémentaire dans un cadre professionnel structuré. Fonctionnalité Création de profils experts Système de matching selon compétences & besoins Réservation & paiement en ligne Visioconférence & suivi Gestion administrative (facturation, contrats, aspects déclaratifs) Autre?
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Time, Project, Visitors Tool, Reporting
We in open child and youth (Offene Kinder- und Jugendarbeit) work need an advanced time-tracking tool. What we require is a system that allows us to record working hours and divide them into different main categories (animation, prevention, development, administration). In addition, we need a tool that helps us track participants in our projects within these categories, differentiated by age groups. Furthermore, we would like to automatically generate reports that document these projects. We have been searching for a suitable solution for years.