A hackathon is usually where startups are born. In the Estonian-Latvian twin town of Valga-Valka, the format is being used for something different: to build a stronger community.
Valga, in Estonia, and Valka, in Latvia, were divided by a border for a century. Today, around twenty thousand people live across the two sides. The physical border crossing disappeared in 2007, when both countries joined the Schengen Zone. What didn’t disappear were the habits of separation: different schools, different languages, different daily routines. Most residents, young people included, rarely cross to the other side for anything more than shopping.
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That is the problem Hack the Border was designed to address. But the choice of tool — a hackathon — might seem unusual for a community-building project.
What is a hackathon?
The word comes from the tech world. A hackathon is an intensive, time-limited event — typically lasting a weekend — where participants form teams to identify a problem, and work together to develop a solution or prototype before presenting it to a panel at the end.
Hackathons have traditionally been the territory of developers and entrepreneurs — a way to test business ideas quickly, build networks and attract investment. Over the past decade, the format has spread well beyond Silicon Valley, finding uses in healthcare, education, public policy and civic design.
Garage48: from startups to communities
The organisation behind Hack the Border is Garage48, one of the most experienced hackathon organisers globally. Based in Tallinn, Garage48 has delivered innovation events across the Baltics, Europe and beyond, collaborating with partners from both the private and public sectors.
Their model is well-tested: bring together a diverse group of people, give them a shared challenge, and create the conditions for something useful to emerge. The format has reliably produced prototypes, partnerships and occasionally real businesses. Applying it to a social challenge in a border town was a deliberate step away from the norm.
Laura Gredzens, project manager at Garage48, is clear about the difference and about what the two approaches share. “Usually we do hackathons for startups and to get business results, but here it’s more like a social project — a hackathon as a community platform. We bring different kinds of people together, put them into teams, and then they try to find solutions for different kinds of challenges,” she says.
The core mechanics, she argues, are transferable: “A hackathon is like a network — people come together and build long-lasting friendships, maybe even find potential business partners. When the Estonians and Latvians came to the hackathon, they were like ice cubes. But by the end, the ice had melted. Everyone had become friends.”
Getting young people into the same room
The specific challenge in Valga-Valka was not a lack of goodwill — it was a lack of contact. Young people on both sides of the border had simply never been given a structured reason to meet. Thomas Danquah, a mental health trainer and one of the project’s mentors, saw the impact of that absence clearly.
“Valga-Valka isa twin town: two countries, one city. But what we found is that the youth on both sides didn’t really integrate. They didn’t talk. So the idea of Hack the Border is to get the youth to work together and create something that’s going to be beneficial for the city itself.”
The hackathon gave them that reason. Mixed Estonian-Latvian teams were formed and asked to think about what would make life better in their shared town. The results were telling.
“We got them to start thinking about things they could do to improve life for young people,” Danquah recalls. “A lot of the ideas focused on better social events, more communal spaces for hangouts. When they saw that the Estonians had the same ideas as the Latvians, they thought: ‘Well, we could put them together.’ And that’s where some of the magic happened.”
From a short hackathon to lasting change
The hackathon itself — a two-and-a-half-day event held at Kääriku in October 2025 — was only the opening act. The project, funded by the EU’s Interreg VI-A Estonia-Latvia programme with a budget of €83,775, runs through to August 2026. After the hackathon came workshops, mentoring sessions, and study trips on both sides of the border, building on the connections made during those first intense days together.
Some results are already visible. One team developed the idea of ‘Together We Sound’, a youth music festival held at the R-12 Rocket Base, a former Soviet nuclear missile installation near Valga now used as a cultural venue. The event was conceived, planned and delivered by the students themselves.
The hackathon format, it turns out, is mostly about the conditions it creates: a deadline, a shared goal and genuine motivation to work together. In Valga-Valka, that combination may have proved more effective than two decades of open borders.