Welcome to Mind The Gap: A Hackathon Aimed at Fighting Ignorance!

Interested in the hackathon? Join our discord here: https://discord.gg/HzBkuEHkXQ

In the 21st century, humanity has made more progress than ever. Whether it comes to poverty, disease, quality of life, life expectancy, or any other indicator of global development, we are significantly better off than we were just a couple decades ago. Did you know that, according to Canary Media, over 85% of new electricity generation infrastructure utilizes renewable energy? That means the switch to renewables is already well underway.

There are many other examples of such surprising facts. The reason we find them surprising is that news sites and social media often produce content that focuses on negative or sensational stories. They often talk about war, crisis, and disaster, but fail to mention positive trends in society. This false perception has a significant impact on society. For example, despite that statistic about climate change, there are still many people who believe climate change is inevitable. That's because they are simply unaware of what humans are doing to combat climate change. Such beliefs can be very dangerous. People who believe that climate change is inevitable, for example, are much less likely to donate to a charity that combats climate change or vote for a presidential candidate who makes climate change one of their higher priorities.

MindTheGap Challenge brings together High School students from around the world to fight such devastating ignorance. Participants will use code to build solutions that will raise awareness about topics like world poverty and climate change. This is a great opportunity for high school students who are passionate about coding and want to use their skills to build something novel that solves a real problem and has a real impact on the world. Even beyond that, this event is a great way to network with other like-minded high school students who are also passionate about coding and start networking.

Don't know how to code? We've got you covered. Throughout the challenge, we will be hosting several workshops teaching several topics. This includes basic HTML/CSS, JS frameworks, how to build a backend for your website, and even how you can build mobile apps using react native.

Don't have a team? That's ok too. When you register, you will get an invite to a discord sever where you can meet new people and form a team.

Want to learn more about the Ignorance Project? Click here.

• Originality
  The idea for your app needs to be original and different from anything that has been done before. The more creative or surprising it is, the better you score in this area.
• Ease of Use
  The app should make it easy for the user to use it. It should be minimally intrusive. Keep in mind that things like making the app fun to use such that people want to use it, or making the app look good are both good ways of scoring points here.
• Potential Impact
  This criteria gauges how much of an impact your app is likely to have in this mission of combating ignorance.