If you are bored with the hackathons held in the last months, you may start paying attention to this one. This event is interesting, because developers are not required to work on a commercial apps. In this event, developers are asked to give a solution for a problem faced by the world’s citizen.

Sanitation Hackathon challenges developers to solve the issues in the real world, in this case, sanitation, by using their skills to build an app. To better understand the sanitation issues of the world, developers are directed to work with experts in the field and make use of the knowledge source provided by the organizers.

Sanitation Hackathon is organized by Water and Sanitation Program of World Bank. This event will be held simultaneously on December 1-2, 2012 in several countries. In addition to Jakarta, Sanitation Hackathon will also be held at Lahore (Pakistan), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Cape Town (South Africa), Dakar (Senegal), Lima (Peru), Manila (Philippines), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Pune (India), Helsinki (Finland), London (England), Hartford (United States) and several other venues at North America.

The University of Indonesia will be the host of Sanitation Hackathon in Indonesia. The event will be held at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Indonesia, Depok. Earlier on October, two preliminary events were already held for a brainstorming session on the issues and solution possibilities which can be realised in an app.

There are several proffered issues which solutions could be thought about by the developers in form of an app. A theme called “Change Me”, for example, asks developers to work on a mobile app to increase children’s awareness in changing their habit to be more hygienic. Toilet, clean water and waste issues are also found as challenges to develop apps as a solution to those problems.

An event with similar concept was once held in Indonesia called Random Hack of Kindness (RHoK). In the two establishments of RHoK in Jakarta, the organizer challenged developers to work on solutions on humanitarian issues. RHoK is now one of the supporters on this event.

So, if you have an idea on how to solve the sanitation problem using information and communication technology, don’t hesitate to register yourself for this event. You can register through Sanitation Hackathon Eventbrite’s page.