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Green Power Hackaton

The Green Power Hackathon opened this year’s edition of the Santander Week. On June 1, the Children’s Day,  kids and teenagers aged 13 to 18 met in our Warsaw Relationship Centre in order to prove that children have power and that the natural environment is very important for them.

We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

During the hackathon, the participants worked on their projects in four groups and were assisted by adult experts, including  Paulina Wojtyczka and Agnieszka Wątrucka, volunteers from our bank. The young people were trying to design projects which could be an effective response to the major environmental challenges of our modern world including things they could do themselves even today and subjects to which they should alert the older generations.

At the end of the workshop, the participants presented the projects developed by each group.

  • The Green Team  proposed a solution named ”Less is more”. People who would decide to use special eco-friendly shopping bags would pay less for certain products purchased on a daily basis from selected stores or service outlets.

  • The Global Eco Education is a project aimed at building a community of young educators. Young people would run workshops and classes and produce videos and promotional campaigns to show how much we can do individually and how much we can achieve working as a group. They would promote simple solutions and share knowledge about the eco-friendly lifestyle and the target audience would be their peers. According to young people, education is very important and the subject of protecting the natural environment still does not get as much attention as it should.

  • Eco Wall: what will you get when you put together plastic bottles, plants and walls? Is it at all possible to combine the three things? The EcoWall project is about decorating the walls of buildings with selected plant species (e.g. the ones which help clear the air) which will be grown in used plastic bottles. A dedicated application will help to design the wall and build a community of people interested in participating in the project.

  • Eco Fame – is an application in which users score points for actions for environment-friendly behaviours and actions. The users can be awarded for:

    • taking up self-defined eco challenges,
    • using certain forms of payment,
    • purchasing goods from certain shops.

    The collected points can be exchanged for e.g. a cinema or for discounts when buying things in shops participating in the program.

All projects were highly appreciated by the judges who evaluated the proposed solutions using the following criteria:

  • potential impact of the project on the natural environment,
  • getting feedback from the potential target audience of the project,
  • assessment of the prototype – whether it accurately reflects the nature of the project,
  • creativity and thinking out of the box,
  • clear communication of the key message in the main presentation/ video,
  • involvement of the whole team in the project.

  • A special award went to the team who prepared and presented the Eco Wall project.

The event was organized by the ”First Places Are Always Free” Foundation and the hackathon partners included Santander Bank Polska and  the Santander Bank Polska Foundation. It was another initiative undertaken by the bank as part of its #ecoSantander, agenda, the goal of which is to raise the environmental awareness of people both inside and outside the organization. This year Santander is also a strategic partner of the Green Ribbon #ForThePlanet campaign”.

In 2018, as part of the promotion of its CSR Report, Santander Bank Polska launched a competition #WeHaveCommonGoals. Non-profit organizations and NGOs were invited to submit their own projects the implementation of which would contribute to the achievement of one of the Sustainable Development Goals supported by our bank. The winner of the competition selected by the votes of Internet users was the  ”First Places Are Always Free” Foundation and their GREEN POWER HACKATHON project. The implementation of the project was made possible thanks to the award – a grant from the Santander Bank Polska Foundation. The project responds to Sustainable Development Goal number 13 of the United Nations “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” which is supported by Santander Bank Polska as part of our #ResponsibleBanking strategy.

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