Kids from 15 villages of Ukraine visited Kyiv to take part in Scratch haсkaton on December 1st and 2nd. During hackathon young programmers were looking for ways of solving social problems with the help of technologies. The event was organized by BrainBasket Foundation, Astarta-Kyiv and Miratech.
A hackathon is an event where people come together to develop a prototype for solving a given problem in a limited period of time. This time kids were offered to reflect on social issues such as ecology, plant cultivation and a healthy lifestyle. Using visual programming language Scratch, teams of young programmers created computer games and animations, which were further presented to the jury.
Inventive and creative — this is how the jury named the projects created by kids and determined the winners. Among the most interesting projects were: an application that helps calculating the need to create waste recycling facilities; an app that defines the benefits of crossing certain types of plants to increase yields; a computer game that helps reducing child’s dependence form gadgets; animation which is revealing the importance of countering plant pests with traditional methods.
“We believe that Ukrainian children in the villages are very talented, but, unfortunately, they do not always have a free access to contemporary knowledge. A good level of understanding information technology can provide them with a numerous opportunities in the future, so the sooner children start learning programming the more successful they become in adult life,” shared Svitlana Mozgova, director of the corporate partnership development and external communications department in Astarta-Kyiv.
This event was organized as a part of the social educational program “IT-education in the villages”, which allows villagers to learn the basics of IT.