Young People Generated Ideas for Disaster Management as part of the “Coding Tomorrow” Project

The “Hackathon for Technological Solutions to Natural Disasters” organized for high school students as part of “Coding Tomorrow”, a joint project of the Vodafone Foundation and Habitat Association, has been finalized. A total of 30 students competed in the hackathon and “Eternal” placed first. All winning teams received technology gift cards to further develop their ideas and projects.

The “Coding Tomorrow” project launched by the Vodafone Foundation and Habitat Association is preparing children and young people for the digital future. A hackathon was organized for high school students as part of the project reaching more than 300 thousand children across Turkey. During the event, organized under the name of “Hackathon for Technological Solutions to Natural Disasters”, 30 students in 9 teams competed and the participants developed technological solutions to cope with disasters.

The “Eternal” team of Samed Kuru, Arda Kadir Bayar, and Metin Coban placed first in the hackathon. The “AfeTED” team of Kayra Celik, Argun Durak, and Nazli Sen ranked second while the “Afet Kahramanları” (Disaster Heroes) team of Mehmet Yavuz Kaya, Cagdas Gormez, Ahmet Guzen, and Bilgehan Can ranked third. The “Vega” team of Ozlem Zehra Bilen, Zeynep Kocadağ, and Irem Isik received the special jury prize.

Ayşegül Arıcan Şeker, Member of the Board of Trustees of Vodafone Foundation, expressed the following:

“As Vodafone Foundation and Habitat Association, we are committed to the ‘Coding Tomorrow’ project, which we launched 7 years ago with the ambition to raise generations ready for the digital future. The ‘Coding Tomorrow’ project is intended to contribute to raising a generation that produces rather than consumes. We have taught coding to more than 300 thousand children in 81 cities so far. This year, we are providing psychosocial support to children affected by the earthquake with our project, which we have adapted to the earthquake zone, titled “Coding Tomorrow Supports Social Life’ combining the usual technology trainings with different workshops. Alongside the trainings, we are also organizing hackathons to help children and young people find solutions to concrete social problems. To this end, we have set the theme of today’s hackathon as “disasters.” On the one hand, we contribute to the “normalization of life in the earthquake zone” through our Foundation projects, and on the other hand, we believe in the necessity of being prepared for disasters, which are an inevitable fact of our lives. The demand for solutions on issues such as pre-disaster recovery planning processes, disaster response, and post-disaster reconstruction is becoming widespread. So, we organized the ‘Hackathon for Technological Solutions to Natural Disasters”’ and offered high school students the opportunity to brainstorm ideas on these issues. Teams worked on developing technological solutions for disasters with their projects. We congratulate all the teams that were deemed worthy of the award and wish them further success.”

Sezai Hazır, the Chair of the Habitat Association, stated the following:

We are proud of the expanding scope of the ‘Coding Tomorrow’ project, which we have partnered with the Vodafone Foundation and has had a positive impact on the lives of thousands of children. This project leads the digital transformation with activities such as various trainings, workshops, hackathons, and ideathons to boost the digital skills of primary, middle, and high school students in our country. As part of the project, we aim to ensure that young people are prepared for disasters through social transformation efforts in earthquake zones. We also strive to increase the awareness of young people in this regard. With the ‘Hackathon for Technological Solutions to Natural Disasters’ we organized for high school students, we offered young people the opportunity to produce technological solutions for disasters after receiving trainings on ‘Disaster Management and Good Practices, Design Thinking, Blank Canvas and Presentation’, especially AI. This hackathon attracted teams from different cities to Istanbul. The strong performance of young people inspires us to have hope for the future. The active participation of young people in such events and the solutions they produce make a valuable contribution to the digital transformation process of our country. Their participation enables us to take hopeful steps toward building a stronger and more solution-oriented society.

Two-day intensive program

“As part of the “Hackathon for Technological Solutions to Natural Disasters”, students were trained for two days on topics such as creating a blank canvas and business plan, design thinking, disaster management and good practices, and presentation. Teams developed their projects through training and mentoring sessions. Having developed their projects through mentoring sessions, the teams prepared presentations for the pre-jury and jury evaluation. Vodafone and Habitat volunteers also mentored the students and provided training in their areas of expertise.

Creative ideas were praised

Eternal, the winner of the first place, works on the design of an integrated device that uses NFC technology to securely store vital information and carry it with them at all times.

The project developed by the runner-up team AfeTed is specially coded to determine the location of all the devices it detects through a Bluetooth signal.

The team that came in third, Afet Kahramanları, has a project that aims to teach what to do before an earthquake to those children who learned how to read and write to the ones up to the age of 18 through a fun game,

The project of the special jury prize-winning team “Vega” is a mobile app for emergencies and pre-disaster, during-disaster, and post-disaster, offering users a single interface for location reporting, matching aid requests, disaster trainings, and many other options.

Technology gift cards awarded

“The winners of the “Hackathon for Technological Solutions to Natural Disasters” were given technology gift cards as a reward for developing their ideas and projects. The winning team received technology gift cards worth TRY 30,000, the runner-up team received TRY 25,000, the third-placed team received TRY 15,000, and the team with the special jury prize received TRY 10,000.

We reached more than 300 thousand children

With the “Coding Tomorrow” project, children between the ages of 7 and 14 are given theoretical and practical training on topics such as introduction to programming, algorithm logic, developing applications, creating stories, and designing games under the supervision of volunteer trainers all around Turkey. Reaching more than 300 thousand children in 81 cities to date, the project generated a total social value of TRY 14 million last year, while each TRY 1 invested in the project has created a social benefit of TRY 7.7. “Coding Tomorrow” trainings are also available free on the online training platform yarinikodlayanlar.com.