Five teams emerge from inaugural Sparks x Build for Good Community Hackathon Finale

12 JUL 2025

Five teams emerge from inaugural Sparks x Build for Good Community Hackathon finale to champion solutions for community

The People's Association and Open Government Products collaborated for the first time for a Community Hackathon bringing together passionate participants to develop tech solutions for community challenges. Members of the public viewed the working prototypes by these participating teams at the Finale on 12 July at Heartbeat@Bedok Atrium.

Singapore, 12 July 2025 – The inaugural Sparks x Build for Good (BFG) Community Hackathon, co-organised by the People's Association (PA) and Open Government Products (OGP) concluded on 12 July 2025 at Heartbeat@Bedok Atrium. This marks the first partnership between PA and OGP for a Community Hackathon. Minister for Digital Development and Information and Minister-in-charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity, Mrs Josephine Teo; Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, Ms Low Yen Ling; and Minister of State for Digital Development and Information, Minister of State for Education and Minister-in-charge of GovTech, Ms Jasmin Lau, attended the event.

A partnership that facilitates innovative tech solutions for the community

After one month of research, development, mentorship and user testing, 21 teams presented their working prototypes to address community challenges to a distinguished panel of government leaders and industry experts at the finale. From these, five teams were selected to advance to a 8-week Build for Good (BFG) Accelerator programme, where they will refine their solutions and launch them in the community. The five teams are CallBridge, LetterKey, Red Flags, SeniorSaysand SeniorSync.
The partnership successfully combines OGP’s Build for Good product development programme that includes mentorship and workshops, with PA’s efforts as part of its broader Sparks initiative and its deep community connections. The collaboration aims to harness the collective knowledge and experiences of the community to co-create innovative tech solutions. By offering dedicated support and resources, the Community Hackathon seeks to facilitate the development of community-led innovation, transform the community aspirations into tangible solutions, and foster greater ownership of ground-up initiatives that can benefit our communities.

A month of intensive research, development, and user testing culminated in the selection of five teams.

The Community Hackathon, which kicked off on 11 June 2025, brought together over 90 youths. Forming teams of 3 to 5, they developed tech solutions for diverse community challenges, including eldercare and caregiver support, community gardening, youth development and social services support. Over the course of the month, the teams delved deep into understanding these challenges, ensuring their problem statements accurately reflected community needs.
The participants engaged with PA's Community Innovation Taskforces (CITs), comprising active Grassroots Leaders and partners, who provided firsthand insights into pressing local issues and invited residents to test and provide input to the solutions. The teams also received mentorship from OGP officers and tech professionals from Better.sg, participated in product workshops led by OGP officers, and gained support from alumni of past BFG runs. With this support, the teams ideated, built prototypes, tested with users in the community, gathered feedback, and refined their solutions for the finale, where members of the public viewed the working prototypes. This approach of co-creating and refining solutions together exemplifies the spirit of community innovation that makes our community stronger.
At the finale, five teams were selected by a panel of judges, comprising government leaders and industry experts. They will advance to OGP’s 8-week Build for Good (BFG) Accelerator programme, starting 24 July 2025. Each selected team will receive $20,000 in funding and mentorship support to further develop and launch their solutions. All other teams are encouraged to collaborate with PA’s CITs who will provide funding support to implement their solutions and continue making an impact in the community.

Diverse talents driving community solutions

Community Hackathon participants come from diverse backgrounds, including students, tech professionals and social service officers. The majority (68%) were youths aged 18 to 24, demonstrating their enthusiasm in stepping up to use technology to solve community challenges. Several teams dedicated their efforts to creating solutions that better support vulnerable communities, such as the elderly and their caregivers, lower-income families, individuals with disabilities, and the homeless. One passionate team who cares for the seniors even developed a solution to help the seniors understand official documents in English, demonstrating their commitment to elderly care. What truly made this Community Hackathon special was how participants, even those without prior tech-building experience, harnessed their unique skills and expertise. For instance, a social worker partnered with other participants in developing solutions for mental health and peer support, demonstrating the power of interdisciplinary collaboration.
For more information, please visit: https://www.community-hackathon.gov.sg to learn more about the 21 projects from the Community Hackathon. For quotes on the winning teams and the CITs who supported some of them, please refer to the Annex.

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Annex A: Quotes from Winning Teams

5 teams who will proceed to the 8-week Build for Good Accelerator from 24 July 2025

Team	Quotes
CallBridge Yeo Shi (26)	“This idea came about during the research stage of the Hackathon, when our volunteering experience made us more aware of the gaps and problems faced by the deaf and hard of hearing community. From our interactions and communications with them, we could better understand their pain points and frustrations and were then able to develop a product that is beneficial to them. With the Accelerator and funding, we look forward to the mentorship provided by Open Government Products which will help us scale our product to even greater heights.”
LetterKey Cham Li Hui (24)	“We are excited to launch LetterKey in the community. Our visit to the Senja Active Ageing Centre revealed that many seniors need help with daily tasks like reading letters, an issue stemming not just from language barrier but also from literacy and accessibility challenges. LetterKey is an audio-first solution, designed specifically because seniors often prefer listening to text. It enables them to understand their letters in four languages - English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil aswell as two dialects, Hokkien and Cantonese. In fact, one resident who tested LetterKey with a Cantonese summary of an insurance document realised it wasn't as daunting as she initially thought! We are looking forward to scaling LetterKey and integrating even more dialects.”
Red Flags Jessica Olivia Pandjang (22)	“This Community Hackathon has created a good opportunity for youths like us to make an impact in the community and to apply the skills we’ve picked up in school and from being in the workforce to develop solutions for public good. We hope that through Red Flags, we will be able to see every single person experience a lower barrier to financial literacy. We're also working closely with Geylang West CIT, whose feedback from user testing was very helpful in shaping the direction of Red Flags. Many current and even future features that we’re planning to build, like personalisation and comparison tools, came directly from the issues they highlighted to us. At the end of the day, every new version of Red Flags will be shaped by what users need. We hope that even the layman will recognise that financial literacy can be for everyone, and that they will be able to make informed decisions on their own and not be placed in risky situations.”
SeniorSays Pradnya Nirgun (29)	“SeniorSays can help everyone across ages, because it creates a simpler journey for everyone when it streamlines senior outreach by auto-filling forms through conversation transcripts, which enables better, faster care—without adding extra steps. Personally, I also see my mum not being able to adapt to newer technologies, so I hope that SeniorSays can make it easier for senior volunteers to help fill up the forms for fellow seniors.”
SeniorSync Lim Jitt Hing (23)	“We’ve been working closely with Active Ageing Centres (AACs), Zhenghua CIT, and Open Government Products to iterate our product and receive real user feedback such that it is tailored to the pain points they experience. SeniorSync is a result of the conversations we had with the AACs which made us realise a gap in the availability of a centralised data system to make caring for seniors more efficient. We’re glad to be able to indirectly help the seniors by providing this solution to AACs, and to also provide the caretakers with more opportunities to spend quality time with seniors they care for. We’re looking forward to being one step closer to the fruition of SeniorSync.”

Team

Quotes

CallBridge

Yeo Shi (26)

“This idea came about during the research stage of the Hackathon, when our volunteering experience made us more aware of the gaps and problems faced by the deaf and hard of hearing community. From our interactions and communications with them, we could better understand their pain points and frustrations and were then able to develop a product that is beneficial to them. With the Accelerator and funding, we look forward to the mentorship provided by Open Government Products which will help us scale our product to even greater heights.”

LetterKey

Cham Li Hui (24)

“We are excited to launch LetterKey in the community. Our visit to the Senja Active Ageing Centre revealed that many seniors need help with daily tasks like reading letters, an issue stemming not just from language barrier but also from literacy and accessibility challenges.

LetterKey is an audio-first solution, designed specifically because seniors often prefer listening to text. It enables them to understand their letters in four languages - English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil aswell as two dialects, Hokkien and Cantonese. In fact, one resident who tested LetterKey with a Cantonese summary of an insurance document realised it wasn't as daunting as she initially thought!

We are looking forward to scaling LetterKey and integrating even more dialects.”

Red Flags

Jessica Olivia Pandjang (22)

“This Community Hackathon has created a good opportunity for youths like us to make an impact in the community and to apply the skills we’ve picked up in school and from being in the workforce to develop solutions for public good. We hope that through Red Flags, we will be able to see every single person experience a lower barrier to financial literacy.

We're also working closely with Geylang West CIT, whose feedback from user testing was very helpful in shaping the direction of Red Flags. Many current and even future features that we’re planning to build, like personalisation and comparison tools, came directly from the issues they highlighted to us.

At the end of the day, every new version of Red Flags will be shaped by what users need. We hope that even the layman will recognise that financial literacy can be for everyone, and that they will be able to make informed decisions on their own and not be placed in risky situations.”

SeniorSays

Pradnya Nirgun (29)

“SeniorSays can help everyone across ages, because it creates a simpler journey for everyone when it streamlines senior outreach by auto-filling forms through conversation transcripts, which enables better, faster care—without adding extra steps. Personally, I also see my mum not being able to adapt to newer technologies, so I hope that SeniorSays can make it easier for senior volunteers to help fill up the forms for fellow seniors.”

SeniorSync

Lim Jitt Hing (23)

“We’ve been working closely with Active Ageing Centres (AACs), Zhenghua CIT, and Open Government Products to iterate our product and receive real user feedback such that it is tailored to the pain points they experience. SeniorSync is a result of the conversations we had with the AACs which made us realise a gap in the availability of a centralised data system to make caring for seniors more efficient.

We’re glad to be able to indirectly help the seniors by providing this solution to AACs, and to also provide the caretakers with more opportunities to spend quality time with seniors they care for. We’re looking forward to being one step closer to the fruition of SeniorSync.”

Community Favourite Award Recipient

Team	Quotes
Hawkify Luar Shui Yan (24)	“It’s a huge honour to be recognised for our product by the community, which we hope can help the hawkers in Singapore. Hawker culture is something that is in our lives every day as Singaporeans, yet little attention is given to how the hawker culture may slowly fade away, just because senior hawkers are not as savvy when it comes to doing publicity via social media. So far, we have worked with 40 hawkers, and onboarded a total of 123 hawkers across 3 hawker centres. We believe that Hawkify can solve this problem in an effective manner, and also bridge the gap between youths and hawkers as we lean into their behaviour of wanting a visual experience to find out more about their favourite hawker stores.”

Team

Quotes

Hawkify

Luar Shui Yan (24)

“It’s a huge honour to be recognised for our product by the community, which we hope can help the hawkers in Singapore. Hawker culture is something that is in our lives every day as Singaporeans, yet little attention is given to how the hawker culture may slowly fade away, just because senior hawkers are not as savvy when it comes to doing publicity via social media. So far, we have worked with 40 hawkers, and onboarded a total of 123 hawkers across 3 hawker centres.

We believe that Hawkify can solve this problem in an effective manner, and also bridge the gap between youths and hawkers as we lean into their behaviour of wanting a visual experience to find out more about their favourite hawker stores.”

Annex: Quotes from PA's Community Innovation Taskforces (CITs)

Four of the winning teams, LetterKey, Red Flags, SeniorSays, and SeniorSync, worked closely with the Community Innovation Taskforces (CITs) to come up with the problem statements. The CITs also facilitated solution testing with these teams.

Team	Quotes
Geylang West CIT (Supported Red Flags) Mr Wan Kwong Weng, BBM, Geylang West CIT Chairman (54)	“Geylang West CIT is delighted to have supported the Red Flag team through feedback, discussions, and user testing sessions. The team's dedication and hard work were remarkable. We see this as an opportunity to utilise our 'Sparks' Community Innovation Space at Geylang West, where the team and partners can continue testing and developing their prototype into a solution for our community."
Nee Soon South CIT (Supported SeniorSays) Mr Alan Poh, Nee Soon South CIT Chairman (51)	“Our CIT members and the SeniorSays team engaged in several discussions. We provided valuable feedback on ground sentiments and facilitated solution testing with seniors - and it was a success! We're delighted they emerged as one of the winning teams. Looking forward, we are eager to continue this collaboration to enhance our senior engagement efforts.”
Zhenghua CIT (Supported LetterKey and SeniorSync) Mr Thomas Koo, Zhenghua CIT Chairman	“Through our discussions with LetterKey and SeniorSync teams, Zhenghua CIT and Fei Yue Active Ageing Centre helped identify core challenges facing seniors. Both teams demonstrated innovative thinking and willingly incorporated feedback to enhance their solutions. Their commitment to improving seniors' lives was evident, and we are excited to implement these solutions in our community with the teams."

Team

Quotes

Geylang West CIT

(Supported Red Flags)

Mr Wan Kwong Weng, BBM, Geylang West CIT Chairman (54)

“Geylang West CIT is delighted to have supported the Red Flag team through feedback, discussions, and user testing sessions. The team's dedication and hard work were remarkable. We see this as an opportunity to utilise our 'Sparks' Community Innovation Space at Geylang West, where the team and partners can continue testing and developing their prototype into a solution for our community."

Nee Soon South CIT

(Supported SeniorSays)

Mr Alan Poh, Nee Soon South CIT Chairman (51)

“Our CIT members and the SeniorSays team engaged in several discussions. We provided valuable feedback on ground sentiments and facilitated solution testing with seniors - and it was a success! We're delighted they emerged as one of the winning teams. Looking forward, we are eager to continue this collaboration to enhance our senior engagement efforts.”

Zhenghua CIT

(Supported LetterKey and SeniorSync)

Mr Thomas Koo, Zhenghua CIT Chairman

“Through our discussions with LetterKey and SeniorSync teams, Zhenghua CIT and Fei Yue Active Ageing Centre helped identify core challenges facing seniors. Both teams demonstrated innovative thinking and willingly incorporated feedback to enhance their solutions. Their commitment to improving seniors' lives was evident, and we are excited to implement these solutions in our community with the teams."

Five teams emerge from inaugural Sparks x Build for Good Community Hackathon Finale