Contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals with open source

Updated on June 3, 2022


We’re proud to participate in a joint initiative of the European Commission and United Nations, Open Source Software for Sustainable Development Goals (OSS4SDG). Through a series of hackathons, OSS4SDG aims to contribute to open source projects that have an impact on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Open source technologies to support SDG #4 – Quality of education

Since 2020, many learners in developing countries have had to abandon their learning due to a lack of appropriate digital learning infrastructure, according to the United Nations. Open source technologies like Moodle, supported by the global community of developers and educators who help improve and extend Moodle LMS and its ecosystem of open source software, play a key role in facilitating eLearning worldwide.

 “The open source Moodle LMS, with over 300 million users, is a leader in expanding digital learning possibilities” (United Nations).

Advance and extend the functionality of Moodle

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As an open source project, Moodle’s mission, development and impact are directly related to SDG #4 – Quality Education, which is the focus of the first hackathon of OSS4SDG, “Get plugged into education!”.

The hackathon has three challenges that aim to extend Moodle LMS to help reach more learners:

  1. Mobile app challenge: Improve, extend or create a plugin for the Moodle app.
  2. LMS VidCon challenge: improve or extend a video conferencing plugin for Moodle LMS.
  3. Moodle Plugin challenge: extend Moodle’s functionality through any type of plugin.

Developers from all around the world are participating in these challenges, together with team members from Moodle HQ who are acting as mentors, providing insight and guidance. The goal of both challenges is to establish concrete and sustainable open source software solutions that can be reused through open source licensing terms and conditions.

“This is a great opportunity for anyone wanting to make a positive contribution to the way educators and learners connect with each other, while gaining some helpful insights from Moodle HQ mentors and showing off their Moodle development skills” said Mick Hawkins, Application Security Engineer at Moodle HQ and mentor in the OSS4SDG challenge.

Winners of these challenges will receive a certificate, as well as gain recognition from UN officials and the EU Commission.