Last weekend a Hackathon jointly planned and run by Teach For Ukraine and the Kernighan & Ritchie Programming Club at AUK was held at AUK Campus. The event aimed to stimulate innovations in solving current social challenges, as well as to encourage young people from Teach For Ukraine schools to study STEM disciplines.
During two days the participants generated new ideas for technological solutions that will help solve social problems, contributing to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Ukraine. At the same time, it was a great opportunity to gain practical experience working on a project in a team, meet like-minded people, make friends and win prizes!
There were seven teams consisting of AUK students, a Teach For Ukraine teaching fellow as the mentor, and students from the teaching fellow's school. Teams chose one of the UN SDGs that interested them, identified a problem in their community related to this SDG, developed an idea for a technological solution that could help solve this problem, and presented their idea to the jury of three professionals working in the field of technology in Kyiv.
Moreover, the participants took part in an interesting presentation about technology and sustainable development by AUK Professor Viktor Putrenko, who was also on the jury.
Every team had amazing ideas and gave very professional presentations, and the winner was Green Grow. This project focused on the creation of a solution for the residents of the Vlykodymerska community to have a stable source of income to rely on. The team's solution envisioned a platform which would provide training in agricultural activities and an online marketplace to help sell the increased agricultural output.
We are highly thankful Teach For Ukraine, AUK Kernighan & Ritchie Programming Club and AUK Student Life Department for their cooperation in attracting youth to create innovations in solving current social challenges.