From November 25-27, the hackathon of the student organization The Raccoons took place, which united both high school students and students from all over Latvia to build creative ideas and learn to program. The Racoons hackathon gathered students from various fields - with coding skills, and without. Students sought to find solutions for actual problems, to make our lives easier, and to get closer to the goal of sustainable living.
ESI program partners SEB and Rimi Baltic offered a Sustainability challenge with an aim to generate ideas and develop practical solutions which can help customers make well-informed, sustainable purchasing decisions while shopping. The challenge was “How might we bring Gen-Z to better financial planning and making sustainable choices while shopping?”
In the final, 18 teams presented their ideas, and during the event, they created prototypes of their ideas from the very basics, starting with computer games for smart devices and ending with water treatment facilities.
The teams could choose which of the hackathon's four challenges to send their ideas to, the best ones were chosen, judging not only the final performance, but also the originality and progress, or how much the participants themselves have learned during the event. The victory of the "Sustainability" challenge was shared by two teams - the "USAVE" team with the idea of a financial literacy tool for adults and young people, who won awards from SEB Latvia. As well as the "EcoGo" team, who won the RIMI Baltic support award, for an idea for an application that would promote the use of local products and thus reduce emissions from transporting foreign products. Other prizes were awarded by University of Latvia Institute of Solid State Physics, Techchill, SwissCom and LIAA.
Ance Āboliņa, Sales support manager in the Private segment at SEB, had the following thoughts of the event: "During the entire hackathon, the feeling of a positive atmosphere did not leave. These three days provided a positive charge and confidence that today's youth will create many new technological solutions that will improve the quality of life in the future!”
The goal of the ESI program is to encourage students to test their ideas and abilities, and we truly believe that sustainability is not only an imaginary term. Looking back at all the bright minds and a ton of ideas we see a lot of possibilities that only need a little boost to become our reality.
ESI project number: 1.1.1. 3/21/A/008.a. ESI project is supported by Rimi Latvija, SEB Latvija, Printify and European Regional Development Fund. Program partners: Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvijas Mākslas akadēmija, Rezekne Academy of Technologies and Riga Graduate School of Law.
