Community Spotlight Series — Mark Chester Tungcul
This spring, Earth Hacks collaborated on a very special hackathon, the ISEC Philippines Innovation Challenge (also known as IPIC). This was not only our first event based in the Philippines, but it was led by a long-time community, former Earth Hacks hackathon participant and winner — Mark Chester Tungcul!
We sat down with Mark to reflect on his first hackathon organizing experience, the role hackathons have played in his educational and professional journey, and his vision for IPIC moving forward.
Earth Hacks: Could you introduce yourself?
Mark: Hello, my name is Mark Chester Tungcul, and I am the National Director for the Philippines for ISEC. I have a degree in Management Accounting here at University of Saint Louis Tuguegarao here in the Philippines. And I work as a digital marketing specialist for a real estate company.
Earth Hacks: Could you briefly explain, what are ISEC and IPIC?
Mark: ISEC means International Students Environmental Coalition. It is an international coalition of students that aims to educate young people and to build capacity among them. Meanwhile, IPIC stands for ISEC Philippines Innovation Challenge. It is an annual innovation challenge event hosted by ISEC Philippines that aims to bring out innovation and creativity amongst the student and to bring them into reality by partnering with local government and national agencies.
Earth Hacks: Could share about the reasoning to center IPIC around Sustainable Development Goals and speak to why you decided to focus on these areas based on the community that you’re working with?
Mark: IPIC 2025 Is centered around several Sustainable Development Goals, namely, SDG 13, which is climate action. SDG 4, which is quality education, and SDG 17, which is partnership in achieving goals. The Sustainable Development Goals address local, national and global goals, which coincide with the problem statement. We partnered with the local youth development office. For quality education, we’ve decided to partner with the department of education. And for SDG 13, we decided to also partner with global organizations. So that is how we anchored the SDGs to the IPIC 2025 design.
Earth Hacks: Awesome, do you think you could maybe expand a bit more on each of the SDGs and what focusing on that goal looked like?
Mark:
We’ve designed the three SDGs to address local, national and global issues, and we also designed the IPIC 2025 as a partnership with local governments (SDG 17), with the local government of Tuguegarao City, through the local youth development office. We actually talked with them and agreed that if there were projects that could solve some issues within the locality of the Euro city, then it would be proposed to the local government and see if there will be funding available. We’ve decided to have partnership for the goals in Tuguegarao City, because we want to expand the networks of the local youth development office and the local youth development council, as well, to organizations present in the city and also nationa lly. We also partnered with the Department of Education through the regional office, seeing how innovation can touch the prevailing issues in education, specifically, with indigenous communities and the far flung areas in the country. We’ve identified it as a main issue within the hackathon itself. Lastly, we have the climate action or SDG 13, which we all know as a global issue. And we have partnered with climate activists as well. Since the Philippines is one of the one of the most at risk when it comes to the effects of climate change and natural disasters, it is a relevant issue nowadays. It is a big issue to tackle, but innovations on the ground could create incremental impacts that would steer the position of the country when it comes to climate adaptation and mitigation. IPIC 2025 aims to address these SDGs to help these offices address the prevailing issues in their field.
Earth Hacks: That’s some good context. Thank you for that. The next question
is more about you individually. It’s really exciting for us to have organized a hackathon with you since you have been a part of the Earth Hacks community for a while. For example, you recently participated in and your team won AmazôniaHack! I would love to hear, how did you first get involved with and what has the impact of hackathons been on your education and your career?
Mark: Actually a fun fact for me is, my first hackathon was with Earth Hacks, the CARGO Hackathon, back in 2021. We won second place in that hackathon, and that was the first ever hackathon that I ever participated in. I participated because I wanted to, you know, explore opportunities. And the fact that we won, the fact that it was actually my first time collaborating with people all around the globe — it was a really fun experience for me. Because of that hackathon, I’ve participated in many hackathons outside Earth Hacks as well, and I’ve won many as well. It was a defining moment for me because now I see the world, the issues in the world, as somewhat capable to solve because of innovations, because of these hackathons. And, you know, it really brought me a lot of experience, especially when it comes to problem solving, from the ideation phase to creating the elevator pitches. Recently, we won the AmazôniaHack 3.0, it was also a great moment for us. While there might be challenges, you know, in languages, because most of my teammates spoke Portuguese, that didn’t stop me. I had so much fun and gained more experience. One of our teammates was a coder, I gained experience on the front end of an application, one of the teammates handled the back end, then the other teammates more on the paper side of the pitch. So it was really a great overall teamwork. And you know, hackathons for me not only brought me experience, but also brought me recognitions, through my university and local governments here in the Philippines,
Earth Hacks: That’s awesome. I love that you were able to work with a team even across the language differences. I’m curious, typically have you gone into hackathons with a team formed? Or have you formed a team there? And what has your experience been in quickly, meeting a group of people and learning to solve a problem together?
Mark: So most of the time when I join hackathons, I usually pick to be randomly put in a group, meeting people all around the world. There are a lot of times where I’ve met people from other countries, and it was really a fun experience. Although there were language differences, although there were differences when it comes to inputs, I think that really adds to the experience, if I randomly join a group. Because of these hackathons, I’m able to build up my networking skills, in which I bring up my experiences in hackathons, I bring up my expertise in front end and in process design. It’s really a wonderful thing to network with other people all around the globe. I think connections are built even across the screens, even across timelines. And, yeah, that’s the beauty of the hackathon, you know, being able to network, being able to build connections, but also building solutions.
Earth Hacks: That was beautifully said. Thank you for sharing. Since Earth Hacks is specifically interested in hackathons as an environmental education tool, based on your experience, how do you think hackathons specifically play a role, or are a unique opportunity to provide environmental education?
Mark: For IPIC 2025, before we had the hackathon or the ideation phase of the solution, we had the teams go through a bootcamp wherein we trained and we educated the participants on the the issues that surrounds the SDGs specified earlier. Hackathons have a role in environmental education in the form of training these participants on the pertinent issues and the most relevant problems in society. In our boot camp, we actually discussed how climate change or the climate crisis have changed the orientation of the Philippines in terms of agriculture, natural resources, disaster resilience, climate adaptation and mitigation.
Earth Hacks: Lovely, let’s get to the last question, which I think is really important for you to talk about. What is your vision for the future of IPIC now that it’s happened once, what have you learned from this experience? What would you like to keep? What would you like to change or grow? Just would love to hear your ideas moving forward.
Mark: For us, IPIC 2025 is just the first event, and we want to have it done annually. We also want it done in a bigger setup, you know, because we had it as a virtual event. So next year, probably we want to have it on a face to face basis. And the beauty of the first IPIC 2025 is that we built connections with universities that have these organizations that are solely focused on innovation and innovation building, and we want to keep that. We also want to keep Earth Hacks as our partner, because they’ve been a great partner all throughout our hackathon, they’ve helped us a lot. And I think that Earth Hacks was instrumental on the success of IPIC 2025. We also see IPIC as a landmark event that will be looked forward to by innovators all around the country. And we also want IPIC to be a platform for partnerships, for not only organizations or participants, but also the government agencies, businesses, civil society organizations, and just be a platform for solution building not just on the local and the national, but also global scale as well.
Connect with Mark on Linkedin
Follow ISEC Philippines on Instagram
(This interview has been lightly edited for clarity)
Interviewer: Annie Wang