A “ciber cafe” in Cuba. Photo by Flickr user Lars Kristian Flem.

With roughly 5 percent of its population accessing the open Internet, Cuba remains one of the least digitally connected countries in the world. As part of Roots of Hope’s second annual “Code for Cuba Hackathon,” participants gathered at Facebook’s headquarters in Silicon Valley this April where teams worked on innovative ideas to help more Cubans get connected. “Roots of Hope was founded on the idea of building bridges between young people in the United States and in Cuba,” said Raul Moas, executive director of Roots of Hope.

Roots of Hope is a nongovernmental organization focused on empowering Cuban youth through technology and entrepreneurship. Moas said recent changes made by the U.S. government to normalize relations with Cuba furthers the organization’s goals of promoting technological empowerment, entrepreneurship and purposeful travel.

“U.S. regulation has lessened,” Moas said, “and we think that will help us both deepen and broaden our impact in the coming months and years.”

Ideas that emerge from Roots of Hope’s events, such as the recent hackathon, may be a way to expand that impact.

Alba Leal, a Cuban-American, was a member of the hackathon’s winning team, Janela Digital (janela means window in Portuguese). Leal said she decided to participate in the event because her beliefs align with those of Roots of Hope.

“They stand for the same values I do,” Leal said, “the belief that Cuban people need to get the tools and skills they deem necessary to build a future for themselves. The new Cuba has to be built from within the island and by its people.”

Because Cubans have more access to email than Web browsers due to government restrictions, Leal’s team developed an idea for a platform that would allow users to search the Web via email.

Users sign up to receive daily digests in categories of their choosing. Then, the service would automatically scrape content from selected websites and return a text file that can be distributed via email to the application’s users.

“I have lived the transformation of the U.S.-Cuba relations and the evolution of the means of communications available for Cuban families,” Leal said. “But as we are already witnessing, changes are occurring… To me that is seeing the dream of my deceased parents becoming a reality.”

A similar email-based platform, Aprestate, won last year’s Code for Cuba Hackathon in Miami.

Aprestate, an email-based ecommerce site, has been dubbed “Craigslist via email.” Boasting over 40,000 active users in Cuba, Aprestate is an online marketplace that allows users to buy and sell goods and services directly from other users.

Knight Foundation, a co-sponsor of both Code for Cuba Hackathons, has also supported a program with Florida International University’s Vaclav Havel Center for Human Rights and Diplomacy on preparing Miami for a possible democratic transition in Cuba.

Knight also supports the Cuba Entrepreneurial Exchange Program, which has returned to Miami for a second year of knowledge exchanges, organized and led by the Cuba Study Group.