Neighborhood Hacks is a global hackathon where high schoolers use technology to solve real problems in their own communities. We believe the most impactful builders start by looking at what's broken around them and then build the fix. Over one week, students from every continent design, build, and pitch solutions to challenges they've personally witnessed at home, then join a global community of young builders doing the same thing, everywhere else.

Get started

  1. Join the discord and visit the offical NH Website
  2. Register individually or with a team
  3. Brainstorm a project idea related to the challenge themes
  4. Build your project during the hackathon period
  5. Submit your final project on Devpost before the deadline

Requirements

What to Build

Neighborhood Hacks allows a variety of paths for applications to submit. As long as it is something that positively impacts your community, it's fair game.

Possible tracks to go down:

  • Health & Well-being
  • Environment & Sustainability
  • Education & Access
  • Safety & Emergency Response
  • Civic Engagement & Connection
  • Accessibility & Inclusion

What to Submit

1. Project name

2. Elevator pitch (short 1-2 sentence summary)

3. Full written description, including a required answer to: "What is the specific problem, and how do you know it's real?" Tell us what you personally observed, who you talked to, or what data you found. This is the most important part of your submission — start here before you start building.

Also describe:

  • What your solution does and how it works
  • What you built it with (languages, frameworks, tools, APIs)
  • Challenges you ran into
  • What you'd do next if you kept building

4. Demo video (2-6 minutes, required). Show your project working

5. Public code repository link (e.g., GitHub), so judges can see your work.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

1 non-cash prize
Finalist Certification
10 winners

All projects that made it to the final round of judging receive an official finalist certification from Neighborhood Hacks.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Caleb Gleason

Caleb Gleason
Student Organizer

Kian Lee

Kian Lee
Student Organizer

Judging Criteria

  • Community Relevance
    Is this a real, specific problem the team has direct knowledge of? 25%
  • Impact Potential
    If this worked at scale, would it meaningfully help people? 20%
  • Technical Execution
    Does it work? Is it reasonably well-built for the time given? 20%
  • Creativity
    Is the approach novel, or a copy of something obvious? 15%
  • Presentation & Clarity
    Can the team clearly explain the problem and solution? 10%
  • Accessibility
    Could the people affected actually use this? 10%

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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