The CSC Summer Impactathon is a beginner-friendly high school hackathon where students build technology to address real needs in their local communities. Your project can be an app, website, tool, AI project, design prototype, or physical gadget. It can help a school, neighborhood, family, club, nonprofit, small business, public space, or community group solve a real problem. Projects can focus on education, accessibility, communication, organization, wellness, sustainability, safety, community support, or any other local issue that affects real people.
AI tools are allowed and encouraged. You may use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or other coding and design assistants to brainstorm, code, debug, design, and build your project. Using AI will not lower your score. However, teams must disclose how they used AI and must be able to explain their project, their decisions, and how their final product works.
You may work individually or in teams of up to 4 people. A 1–2 minute demo video is optional but encouraged. Each team must submit a project name, short description of the problem, explanation of what the project does, demo link, list of tools/technologies/AI used, AI-use disclosure, team member names, and source code if available. For physical gadgets, submit photos or a short demo video. For apps, websites, and AI tools, submit a demo, GitHub repository, screenshots, or 1–2 minute video.
Prizes include the CSC Impact Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards, plus Honorable Mentions. The Gold Award recognizes the strongest overall project. The Silver Award recognizes an excellent project with strong execution. The Bronze Award recognizes a strong project that clearly identifies a real local problem. Honorable Mentions recognize additional standout projects that show creativity, effort, learning, and potential impact. To be eligible for a CSC Impact Award, teams must opt in and agree to the following: The project must be open source or publicly viewable after submission. The team must provide a public project link. The team gives CSC permission to feature and promote the project on CSC’s channels. CSC may contact winning teams to discuss opportunities to expand the project’s reach. Teams must disclose how they used AI tools, if applicable, and must be able to explain what they built, how it works, and what role outside tools or AI played in the final project. Opting in does not transfer ownership of the project to CSC; creators keep ownership of their work.
Judging Criteria include Learning (Can the team clearly identify what they built, why they built it, how it works, and what they learned?), Design (Is the project easy to understand and use?), Creativity (Is the idea thoughtful, original, or interesting?), Functionality (How well does the project work?), and Impact (Does the project address a real local community problem?).