TechTALENT

The goal of TechTALENT is to support children’s and teenagers’ interest in technology and help them take their first steps in the IT field.

TechTALENT creates a platform where children can:

• present their ideas
• receive professional feedback
• work with mentors
• see how technological ideas can be transformed into real products

The winner of the project receives funding to implement their project in real life!

The first season, TechTALENT 1.0, took place as a digital project competition for school students aged approximately 10 to 17 years old from Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region.

An important value of the project lies not only in the final competition but also in the learning process. During the project, participants receive:

• educational workshops
• feedback from experts
• mentorship from IT industry professionals

The final stage is the presentation of the best projects to a panel of experts and the awarding of laptops to the finalists, while the winner also receives funding to bring their project to life.

Results of the first season:

• nearly 30 registrations from 5 communities of the Kharkiv region
• 60% of participants were teenagers over the age of 14
• 40% of participants were younger school students
• 10 finalists who presented their projects online

Along the presented projects were:

• computer games based on mythology and storytelling
• educational games for language learning
• 3D models for video games
• simulation platforms for modeling rocket flights
• navigation systems based on geographic coordinates
• websites and digital services

These results demonstrated that children are not only interested in technology — they are already creating their own digital products.

4th block — Season 2.0 results

The second season — TechTALENT 2.0 — has now taken place and concluded with an offline final in Kharkiv. This time, the competition received 10 applications, of which 6 finalist teams advanced to present their projects to a panel of 6 judges — representatives of CodeIT4Life Ukraine, CodeIT, Kharkiv IT Cluster, the National Aerospace University, and VEC-UA.

Among the final projects: “Rat Riot” (Hryhoriy Zubov), “Cyber Smart City” (Ivan Zhyliak), “Underwater Nightmare” (Tymur Leunov), “naholosy” (Illia Karpenko), “CareBridge” (Oleksandr Kulik), and “Delivery Leleka” (a seven-member team).

The winner was “Rat Riot”, a cooperative comedy game created by 16-year-old Hryhoriy Zubov, a 10th-grade student at School №169. He received equipment and mentorship support to further develop and commercialize his game.

TechTALENT has once again proven that ideas from Kharkiv region’s school students have real potential to become genuine products — today’s competition projects, tomorrow’s startups and technological contributions to the country’s development.