250 hackers from 62 countries spent a weekend building real solutions to global challenges — and the jury picked a low-tech hydroponic farming system from Nigeria as the grand winner. Verdant's PVC-pipe growing towers can produce livestock feed in just six days, no electricity or special skills required.

WHAT THIS PANEL COVERS

• How Hack for Earth's "Dream-Hack-Build" method turns weekend hackathons into market-ready startups through a six-month accelerator
• Why a Rwandan AI platform that grades handwritten schoolwork could save teachers 15-20 hours per week
• How simple hydroponic systems built from PVC pipes and buckets remove climate and soil from the farming equation entirely
• Why Indonesia's EKA system turns satellite data into actionable climate priorities without users ever touching AI
• How an Indian app uses multimodal AI to give voice to children with speech loss and vision guidance to post-surgery patients

PANELISTS & JURY

• Ann Molin — Founder & Secretary General, Hack for Earth Foundation (Host)
• Christian Schmitz — CEO, PDIE Group
• Carolina Lisle — WePlanet
• Kadir Günger — Chairman, Sustainable Impact Capital Holding
• Stephen Koenig — Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières
• Marie-Claire Maxwell — Hack for Earth Foundation Board & Business Sweden
• Imtiaz Hussain — Partner, ICANN Asset ManagementCATEGORY WINNERS🎓 Education: Brain Inc. (Rwanda) — AI-powered handwriting grading platform🌱 Food: Verdant (Nigeria) — Low-tech hydroponic farming systems (Grand Winner)🏗 Construction: Green Build AI (Pakistan) — AI carbon-cost scorecard for buildings🛰 Space: EKA (Indonesia) — Satellite-to-action climate decision support⚕ Health: Ocean Wave (India) — Multimodal AI for speech and vision accessibility

unDavos is a community-driven summit running during WEF week in Davos, democratizing the conversation around global challenges.

🌐 undavos.com

Tags: hackathon, citizen innovation, sustainable development, SDGs, food security, hydroponics, AI education, climate tech, space data, health tech, social entrepreneurship, Hack for Earth, impact investing, Davos 2026, unDavos, WEF, global challenges, startup accelerator