“Llama for Good”, a hackathon co-hosted by Meta and Deloitte Ireland, provided social enterprises with practical demonstrations of the ways Meta’s AI can empower charities, social enterprises and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to do more with less.
The event, hosted at Meta’s International HQ in Dublin’s Ballsbridge, brought together three leading NGOs - the Open Doors Initiative, Citywise Education, and NOW Group - to develop innovative solutions using its Llama AI model.
Opening the event Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, said: “Open-source technologies have strong potential to drive long-term innovation, economic growth and competition across our society. Ireland, as a key European digital leader, is building a future where AI is transformative and trusted. This hackathon reflects the potential of this technology to create real world impact and positive change.”
Engineers from Meta and Deloitte worked with them on the day to craft workable AI prototypes designed to address some of the real-world challenges they face.
RM Block
Because Llama is a free, open-source AI model, it removes cost barriers, making advanced technology accessible to NGOs of all sizes.
“Meta’s Llama is a game-changer for NGOs. As an open source and free-to-use AI, Llama removes financial barriers and empowers organisations to innovate locally, building solutions tailored to their communities and missions,” said head of Meta Ireland Anne O’Leary.
“I’m very proud to see dynamic Irish NGOs like the Open Doors Initiative, Citywise Education and NowGroup benefit from Llama and wider industry expertise at the Llama for Good hackathon, and look forward to seeing how the ideas developed can inspire further innovation and positive change.”
For Emmanuel Adeleke, a Deloitte Ireland partner in technology and transformation, helping NGOs leverage the benefits of AI is a source of pride.
He and his team of engineers supported the NGOs with hands-on AI prototyping and AI fluency sessions. It meant that all attendees, regardless of their technical background, were able to get a better insight into how the tech is evolving and had the opportunity for an engaging Q&A session.
“Both on a personal level and as an AI leader, I am passionate about AI as a source for sustainable and equitable progress for all of our community, not just for organisations with large technology budgets,” said Adeleke.
“AI is a fast-moving space and not every organisation has the same level of access to the talent required to really make an impact with this technology,” he said.
“Another common challenge we find with NGOs is that there is never enough capacity to be able to support all the services and service users they look to support. For us it’s about how we, through the use of AI, help give capacity back to people working in NGOs, so they can spend more time focused on the communities they serve,” he said.
Opening doors for good
Among those taking part was Jeanne McDonagh, chief executive of The Open Doors Initiative, which connects jobseekers with experienced professionals offering guidance, career advice, and pathways to education, employment and entrepreneurship.
The NGO works with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, people with disabilities, disadvantaged youth, those from Traveller or Roma backgrounds, LGBTIQ+ people, individuals with a criminal past, and those with intersecting identities.
All face higher barriers to employment in Ireland, often remaining excluded even during times of near full employment.
“The hackathon was a really great opportunity for us to look at AI and how we might use it in our work to improve our outcomes, our capacity, and our ability to work with more people,” said McDonagh.
“In particular we looked at mentoring, which springboards people into education, employment and entrepreneurship. We wanted to see how to use AI to generate matches between mentors and mentees, and for follow ups, to ensure everything is running smoothly,” said McDonagh.
On the day an AI prototype was developed that can do the heavy lifting by matching mentors and mentees based on shared skills and aspirations mentioned in their application, using a traffic light system to measure how strong the match was.
Supporting education in disadvantaged areas
Citywise Education, another participant, supports young people in underserved communities into third level education. It works with thousands of children each year, offering programmes that raise their educational aspirations, helping them to reach their full potential.
Last year 95% of the students Citywise worked with went on to third level, said its chief executive Daire Hennessy, who attended the Llama for Good hackathon to find out how AI could help streamline its back-office processes and improve its course delivery, ultimately boosting its impact.
“As a reasonably small team, anything that can free up our time to work with more young people is a big plus for us,” he said.
“Our Llama models have been downloaded over 1.2 billion times, with real-world projects already making a difference - a massive endorsement of the potential for Meta’s AI to drive innovation, economic growth and competition.”
— Anne O’Leary, head of Meta Ireland
In collaboration with Citywise, Deloitte and Meta engineers created an interface where scanned hand-written paper forms could be uploaded. This sorted vital data, like names and date of births.
It also looked at how AI might support young people’s learning, by creating an AI tutor that could help them on an individualised basis, and the guardrails needed to do that. “It’s about ensuring the young person is not just asking AI to answer the question for them, but using it as a tool to help them think about that question in a deeper way,” said Hennessy.
NOW Group supports neurodiverse individuals, including those with autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, and learning difficulties, across the island of Ireland, helping them access employment, training, and volunteer opportunities.
For its leaders the hackathon was an opportunity to explore how AI can link currently siloed data, especially around its popular JAM card and app.
The acronym stands for Just a Minute and is a simple but effective tool to help people with invisible disabilities to overcome communications barriers while out and about in their daily life.
“The hackathon allowed us to see how we want to respond to and operate with AI in the future, as we look to grow strategically and expand our footprint across Ireland,” said Claire McCleery, director, JAM Card for Business.
“For us it’s about finding ways to work together to get the best outputs and to focus on continuous data driven improvement both for us and for our partner organisations too,” she said.
