(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Alija)

Last week on Hackfest we alerted you of a hackathon at the SA Innovation Summit which aimed to help tackle ECD (Early Childhood Development) issues around the globe. The winner has now been announced, and we've got the scoop! 

NappiDaddi is a new application which hopes to encourage more fathers to be more involved with the child's early development through introducing a competitive element. Various challenges will be available to dads and participants can engage with one another via leaderboards, an integrated gaming system, and a service to exchange knowledge. 

Kanya Msila, a participant on the winning team, spoke of why this approach was taken: “We think that this will appeal to men specifically, as by nature we are very competitive. NappiDaddi eases the transitioning into parenthood through clear pattern recognition and rule-based guidance as well as democratises the process of raising cognitively strong and healthy children through a facilitated network." 

The hackathon was held in the Cape Town Stadium and was hosted by Innovation Edge, IBM, Silicon Cape and the SA Innovation Summit. Sonja Giese, programme leader at Innovation Edge, said: "A platform such as the SA Innovation Summit offers many exciting possibilities for addressing challenges within the early learning space." 

She continued: "We hope to harness the creative thinking and technological know-how of the people attending the Summit and encourage them to apply their skills to resolving problems children in South Africa, and their caregivers, face on a daily basis." 

Solutions created during the 24-hour event were judged by a panel of technology and ECD experts and prizes were awarded based on their creativity, feasibility, cost-effectiveness and potential for implementation at scale. 

Innovation Edge, a social innovation fund for ECD, hosted a similar event back in July at the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship which spawned a winning application titled Crèche Connect. Camilla Swart, Education Innovations at Bertha Centre, said: "The judges really liked the Crèche Connect idea, which was based on the concept of Trip Advisor for crèches." 

She continued: "In low-income communities, informal crèches can have variable quality assurance. Being able to rank the facilities will help parents find the best crèche for their child and increase quality in the sector.  This idea was designed to empower parents." 

Do you think hackathons such as these display their power for social good? Let us know in the comments.