Globally, almost 4 billion people live in either moderate or extreme poverty (Wikipedia). However, one high school senior in Utah is hoping to change that with the development of applications that help prevent poverty. On January 21 and January 22, Zach Stay from Mountain View High School will be hosting the “Hacking Poverty” conference where developers can come together to develop applications to assist in the fight against poverty.

Zach Stay, a Senior at Mountain View High School in Orem, Utah, began coordinating the conference only weeks ago after realizing he really wanted to find a way to help give back to his community. (He notes the project is not part of a Senior Project requirement, or part of any local church.) Zach was inspired to host this type of conference after reading about the similar conference, “Random Hacks of Kindness” – a developers conference that made applications that helped during natural disasters. One application that emerged from this conference was a twitter application that was used heavily during the earthquake in Haiti. That conference was organized and funded by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and several other Bay Area firms.

Zach hopes to see applications developed at Hacking Poverty that will be helpful to impoverished communities in not only reacting to disasters, but entirely preventing the human tragedy such as we witnessed during the Haiti earthquake. These ideas include a Tsunami Twitter/SMS Broadcaster. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center would send out RSS feeds for various areas regarding tsunami warnings. The Tsunami Twitter/SMS Broadcaster app would allow a user in a specific geographic area to subscribe to a twitter or SMS broadcast so they would receive a tweet or a text message if there is a tsunami warning for their area. The app would function similarly to the Amber Alert system. Other ideas include apps that teach basic first aid in multiple languages, and twitter location-based app that tweets out the GPS location of a user in the absence of a physical address, which could be useful in search and rescue.

Once the projects are completed, they will be made available for free download as open source code to any NGO or organization that is serving the poor. Currently, about 25 developers have RSVP’d to the conference, with a capacity for up to 400. Utah Governor Gary Herbert has been invited to speak at the event as well. If you would like to participate in the conference, here are the critical details:

Dates:
January 21, 2011 3:00 pm – 9:00 pm
January 22, 2011 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Location:
Mountain View High School
665 W Center St
Orem, UT 84057

Bring:
Laptop, access to required programming tools, and additional ideas to be developed.

WiFi, snacks, and beverages will be provided

To register, or learn more about how you can help the Hacking Poverty project, visit HackingPoverty.org or the Hacking Poverty Facebook Group.