Just a year ago, they had never even heard of the FIRST Tech Challenge. But on March 28–29, they advanced to the playoffs at one of the first large-scale competitions of this kind in Ukraine.

The Irpinchyky team from the Save Ukraine Center achieved what seemed almost impossible: as complete newcomers with no prior competition experience, they made it into the top 8 out of 12 teams — competing against opponents who had already performed at the European level.

They built a robot. Programmed it. Presented it to judges. Formed their own alliance in the playoffs. And brought home the Reach Award — for real impact on the STEM community and for engaging new participants in the program.

For Irpin, this is a first-of-its-kind achievement. For Ukraine, these were also among the first FTC competitions of this scale.

This became possible thanks to the financial support of Svitla Systems and the organizational support of Save Ukraine. The competition was organized by the NGO “Innovative Educational Technologies,” the company 2D3D, and the STEM center “Sokrat.”