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IBM Launches 2021 Call For Code Global Challenge

Mar 23, 2021
The Weather Channel
BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE - MARCH 4: A woman pumps water from a communal borehole on March 4, 2021 in the Pumula South suburb of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Pumula South was one of the suburbs worst affected by the city council's 2019 water-shedding exercise, with some residents having had no access to piped water for the past 13 months. (Photo by KB Mpofu/Getty Images)

The 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge, an initiative to combat climate change with open-source-powered technology, is officially underway.

The competition was announced Monday morning by IBM, along with Call for Code Creator David Clark Cause, Charitable Partner United Nations Human Rights and the Linux Foundation.

IBM is the parent company of weather.com and The Weather Company.

In its fourth year, the contest has generated more than 15,000 applications from 400,000 developers across 179 nations.

“Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and we must apply our collective ingenuity and cutting-edge technologies to make a lasting difference,” Ruth Davis, director of Call for Code for IBM, said in a news release.

"I encourage every developer and innovator around the world to seize this opportunity through Call for Code to change our climate trajectory.”

IBM works with winning teams to incubate and deploy their solutions in the real world, Davis said. The winning team also receives $200,000.

The launch coincided with the United Nations' World Water Day, which aims to bring attention to water problems around the world, including lack of clean drinking water and other sanitation issues.

Some 2.2 billion people worldwide don't have access to safely managed water supplies, according to the World Health Organization.

Clean water and sanitation is one of three specific focus areas in this year's Call for Code competition. The other two are hunger, along with responsible production and green consumption.

Clark said those three themes are key to combating climate change.

Last year's winner, an agricultural app named Agrolly, supports small farmers by providing weather forecasts, climate trends and other data to help better inform their decisions and defend their businesses against climate change. Agrolly has so far been tested by more than 500 rural farmers across Mongolia, India and Brazil and is now moving on to its next phase of development.

Agrolly's founders are a team of four people, each from a different country and each with different backgrounds. In a recent interview with weather.com, the team encouraged anyone with an interest in solving a problem to join Call for Code.

"Yesterday it was four of us dreaming and today we are doing something really meaningful at a global level," said Chimegsaikhan (Chimka) Munkhbayar, head of sales and marketing in Asia for Agrolly.

Visit IBM Developer to learn more about Call for Code.
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