FAQ

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  • What are challenges?

Challenges are open competitions for the best transparency and accountability projects. community boost_r challenges run in Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They combine online and offline when it comes to the ideas development, feedback gathering and the voting process.

  • How does it work?

Between mid-April and May, participants are invited to submit ideas and share comments on evolving concepts.  After a public vote to determine a short list, a panel of Judges will review comments and interaction with ideas on the platform to surface finalists.

All submitted projects will be shared in a project gallery for discussion and 7 finalists per country will be paired with technologists to develop platform specifications to be programmed in May and June during the code sprints (hackathons).  Over the 48-hour sprints, winning sites and/or applications will be built for launch at an Awards Event organized towards end of June.  There, 3 solutions per country will be chosen to receive cash a grant and tech support to ensure a successful start to their idea.  Throughout the Challenge, Fundacja TechSoup, Dokukino and IPKO Foundation will manage a series of offline events around the country to bring together communities of programmers and social innovators, raise profile around the social justice discussion and share results

  • Who can take part in a challenge?

Challenges invite participation from all social innovators and entrepreneurs, NGOs and programmers. Through a variety of creative offline events and online forums, partnerships with IT communities, corporations and web-media outlets, innovators will be targeted to join and share both ideas and feedback.

NOTE: We encourage individuals as well as organizations to apply but for legal reasons, grants to finalists may only be given to the three winners per country upon the completion of a grant agreement between Fundacja TechSoup and an NGO. If the winner is an individual, she/he will either need to partner with an existing NGO or start one as a condition of receiving the cash grant support.  

  • What is the timeline for challenges?

Challenges start with the submission phase during which citizens of Kosovo, BiH and Serbia submit their ideas for a social project to the community boost_r site. The submission phase starts on April 18 and ends on May 14 (midnight) for BiH and Serbia. Projects for Kosovo can be submitted till May 20.

The submission phase is followed by the voting phase and the Jury work (May 11-18 for BiH and Serbia, and May 20-28 for Kosovo). After the voting finishes a code sprint (hackathon) for seven best projects in each country will be organized:

•  on May 25-26 in Sarajevo (BiH)

•  on May 31 - June 1 in Belgrade (Serbia)

•  on June 15-16 in Pristina (Kosovo)

Winning sites and/or applications will be built for launch at an Awards Event organized end of June - beginning of July. During these events (separate for each of the countries) judges will pick up 3 winners which will be granted 5000 USD and a variety of technical support for the further development of their projects upon submission of an implementation plan.

A timeline of challenges is to be found below:

  • What is the licensing of the projects submitted to community boost_r?

All submitted projects should be open source and should have their code with a translation module published to encourage regional propagation.  Finalists will be governed by the Attribution Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States license.

  • What are the submissions limits?

Submissions are limited to ten (10) ideas, three (3) complete Projects per any one (1) organization, NGO, or group.  If you have questions about organizational affiliation of your project or how to submit, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

  • How many projects can I vote for?

You can vote for 3 projects for each country. We keep count of your votes and you can check how the projects you voted for are doing by visiting the “my votes” tab on your profile.

  • What are the criteria the projects are judged by?

The judges will select finalists based on a combination of community interest as demonstrated by the community voting, comments and followers; and ability to answer the following questions:

•    Feasibility: Will people use the tool to collaborate? Is the proposed solution feasible from a technical point of view?
•    Social Justice Potential:  Does this idea educate, organize, or empower people to address a particular social justice issue and does it have potential to make a significant contribution to work on the issue?
•    Likelihood of attracting outside investment and/or interest:  Is this an elegant ICT solution that provides scalable impact for relatively little cost? Will external partners (other human rights actors, venture capitalists, IT companies, etc.) be intrigued by this idea and want to invest in it? Will it provide adequate social or capital return on investment?
•    Innovation:  Does the Project provide an innovative solution? (The idea does not need to be brand new or never tested, as long as it is innovative and primed for success in the proposed environment.)
•    Scalability: Can the project be scaled widely to address growing needs?

  • What do winners get?

Apart from a well-deserved publicity and priceless community support, each one of the three winners per country will receive a 5,000 USD grant for the further project development.

  • What is community boost_r?

community boost_r started as a joint initiative of Polish based Fundacja TechSoup, Dokukino (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) Zašto ne (BiH) and Kosovo 2.0 (Kosovo) in June 2012. The project’s purpose has been to inspire, enable and promote tech for civil participation in transparency and accountability initiatives in the Western Balkans. Now the project is run by Fundacja TechSoup, Dokukino, Zašto ne and a Kosovo based IPKO Foundation with the support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy.
You can read more about us in the About section of this website.

  • Whom to contact in case of questions concerning the application process?

We are here to help you. Contact us at [email protected]