YCC was honored to host YEP’s Techathon competition which lasted for two days, or more precisely 34 hours. The aim of the competition was to gather in one place high school students from different cities and have the chance of working in teams and make efforts to come up with an idea that will provide a technological solution for issues concerning the Municipality of Gostivar. During the entire process, the teams were overseen and mentored by different IT experts and professionals from other scopes. At the very end, the teams presented in front of the professional jury the final projects that they have been working on during the past two days. There were first, second, third, and People’s Choice awards for the teams with the best ideas, which hopefully will be practiced and implemented in our community.

The Techathon competition was organized within the Project “Techaton” which is implemented within the Regional Programme on Local Democracy in the Western Balkans (ReLOaD), funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was the first event of this kind that has been organized at YCC and the first Hackathon competition organized in Gostivar generally. 50 high school students competed with each other and in total, more than 120 people attended/visited the competition. We feel privileged that we had the opportunity to host this unique event.