*Desarrollando América Latina* (DAL) is changing the way Latin American citizens relate to their local communities, cities, countries and regions. We work to solve social problems common to the region, such as education, health, public security, transport, among others, using the power of technology, open data, and co-creation throughout the community.
In 2011, the Chilean-based organization, Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente, collaborated with NGOs around the region (En Argentina, Wingu, en Brazil, W3C, en Mexico, Fundar y Citivox, en Peru, Escuelab, y en Uruguay, Cubox) to carry out the first ever regional Open Data Hackathon. Since that first 36-hour event, we have evolved into one of the most active, largest open-data initiatives in the region. We have created an active and engaged network in twelve Latin American countries striving for innovative and scale applications to create high social impact in their local communities.
We have facilitated and strengthened an active and engaged community centered around innovation and openness. We empower the community of entrepreneurs, technologists, developers and designers, challenging them to work together with their local governments and civil society organizations to co-create solutions that may be able to make a positive change for Latin American citizens.
In 2013 we implemented a new methodology to better and more efficiently achieve our goals, an Apps Challenge. More ideas, better solutions, more sustainable applications, and finally, open data start-ups. Over sixteen local leads in twelve countries coordinated our first Apps Challenge, an intense three weeks of co-creation of applications. Guided by multi-stakeholders, the participants use open data to create these powerful solutions. This primary data includes everything from local data at the municipal and city level to regional data, from national government data and studies to data from international institutions. The participants in the event also use and generate crowd-sourced data, making their applications more dynamic and community oriented.
With the support of Socialab, a Latin American incubator of social projects, we are accelerating the six best Latin American applications, transforming them into disruptive, high social impact start-ups.

*Desarrollando América Latina* prides itself on the amazing group of people who work to fulfill our common objectives throughout the region. We even have our own hashtag, #DALfamily. Counting our entire network, this past year we partnered eighteen organizations, collaborated with over 60 local groups, and reached out to over 800 participants. There is at least one local coordinator in each country that has joined this initiative, generally either a non-governmental organization that focuses on transparency, open government issues or a tech-oriented organization that works with open data.
In 2013 we were fortunate enough to work with sixteen local leads. In Argentina, we worked with Wingu. In Bolivia, with Fundación SIM. In Brazil, with both SEA Tecnología as well as the W3C. In Chile, with the Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente. In Colombia, with Gobierno Abierto Colombia. In Costa Rica, with Grupo Inco. In Ecuador, with Fundapi. In Guatemala, with Guatecambia. In Mexico, with both Fundar as well as SocialTic. In Paraguay, with Fundación CIRD, Hackathon Paraguay, and TEDIC. In Peru, with Escuelab. And finally, in Uruguay, with DATA. In 2014, our DAL family is proud to include Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador in our ranks.


Links: http://2013.desarrollandoamerica.org/

The idea behind *Desarrollando América Latina* began in a café in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Juan José Soto from Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente got together with Martin Waserman from Google Latin America to chat about how to make a positive change in the region using the tools they were most familiar with, technology and open data.
In 2011, the Chilean based organization, Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente, collaborated with NGOs around the region (En Argentina, Wingu, en Brazil, W3C, en Mexico, Fundar y Citivox, en Peru, Escuelab, y en Uruguay, Cubox) to carry out the first ever regional Open Data Hackathon. Since that first 36 hour event in 2011, we have evolved to one of the most active, largest Open Data initiatives of the region.