UWCHACKS – around the world, one code at a time.

By UWC Hacks Team, UWCSEA Dover
16 November 2022

UWCSEA Dover students recently organised a hackathon, called UWCHacks, to encourage more young programmers to collaborate. The two-week-long event involved High School students in teams of four each with the opportunity to display their coding abilities by designing solutions to problems. Participants included students from UWCSEA Dover, UWCSEA East, UWC ISAK Japan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and India.

The hackathon’s prompt of “Making everyday life better” was intentionally broad to give teams freedom and flexibility in designing their solutions. Guests speakers featured Anirudh Baddepudi UWCSEA Dover ‘17 from Google and Samson Qian from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who were invited to give lectures on various topics such as blockchain, AI and Machine Learning to inspire the teams

The UWCHacks Team (Justin, Viktor, and Ayush) also held Python, Machine Learning and Swift (iOS development) workshops to equip participants with the programming skills to come up with interesting solutions. On the day of the finale, teams pitched their ideas to judges from Tata Consultancy Services who ranked the products based on a number of criteria.

We wanted to provide an outlet for tech enthusiasts from all over the world to collaborate and display their programming abilities.

– UWCHacks Team Vision

The team shares their motivation behind the project and what it means to be a part of UWCHacks

What does the project mean to you and how does it inspire your team?

We wanted to provide an outlet for tech enthusiasts from all over the world to collaborate and display their programming abilities. We hope to inspire the community to make projects that will help the community through technology and to inspire the community to create initiatives that encourages collaboration between UWCs.

We had several inspirations for different parts of this project. From our experiences in hackathons, we noticed that many teams have interesting ideas, but there are not many resources to help teams continue their projects. We wanted to create a hackathon that will connect teams interested in continuing their projects with mentors. 

We also noticed that many hackathons expected students to be fluent in app/web development languages. In order to better suit beginners, we held beginner workshops in Python, AI with Python, and Swift. We also gave no code options to allow students to quickly make the UI. We wanted students to get their ideas down first then develop their product afterwards.

Justin, the Head of International Communications, decided to have international participation from India, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh along with participation from UWC ISAK in Japan. The inspiration for getting other UWCs involved was during UWC Day when it was noticed that there did not seem to be that many events between UWCs and wanted to bring more unity and collaboration between UWCs. Having LEDCs take part in the hackathon was inspired by my interactions with Clifford Nau, a Haitian MIT Sloan graduate student, who I Co-Founded Palm Ventures, a Caribbean Insurance Agency encouraging the Caribbean diaspora to buy insurance for their families as a part of their remittance. His openness, ambition, and support towards me made me realise the ambition that is present in LEDCs and made me want to provide these people with opportunities through the hackathon.

How has cross-collaboration from the Dover Campus organising team with the participation of East Campus teams helped with the future of UWCHacks?

Getting participation from UWCsea East helped create a more collaborative environment between Dover and East. It helped raise awareness of the event at East and opened the door for greater collaboration in the future.

We are currently looking for teams who will continue the project in future years. UWCHacks may try to make the event have more UWCs participating and help organise it in future years. However, the future leaders can decide how to specifically continue the project. We hope to inspire young changemakers as they grow more involved with our team's vision in UWCSEA and beyond.

I attended UWCHacks in hopes to improve my community during dark times. Being a part of my team, (Team Peacemakers) allowed me to present about AI and the Internet of Things and how it applies to real life and everything we see around us. AI is a growing field and will have a huge influence on the future of work and life.

–Qurban, High School student from Afghanistan