The #peacehackcamp is an intensive media literacy and inter-communal peacebuilding project that taps into open source tools and media for their ability to promote collaborative enterprise in learning and innovation, foster mutually beneficial interaction among communities, enable shared ownership and effectively distribute gained knowledge.

The first #peacehackcamp in Juba, South Sudan featured activities from coding and app creation, to hands-on DIY solar power generation, to the use of wikipedia and open knowledge resources to support literacy and education, to Open ICT in agriculture and community economic development, to life skills and holistic empowerment for women to the use and training in social media for conflict mitigation. With the aim to promote open technologies and social innovation as key peacebulding mechanisms the #peacehackcamp has the potential to bring into focus these elements of civil society development as forms of empowerment that reach beyond politcal and conflict driven inertia.

If the participants of the first #peacehackcamp 'have their way', it will be the first of more such events as a means to share peacebulding and innovation experiece between countries and regions facing equally challening post-conflict development scenarios, such as Colombia – where GIG members have expressed an interest to hold the next international #peacehackcamp, and Pakistan where the #peacehackcamp model is being examed as means to avoid further conflict, strengthening an extremely complex and fragile path towards an open, plural civil society.

This session is meant as a working meeting to asses and construct the means with which tech innovators and open culture advocates from various backgrounds and regions can channel their experiences as effective agents for enabling and supporting peace and development.