Organized by the Kodea Foundation, the first place was obtained by the “Braille Printer Machine” project of the Bicentennial Liceo de Excelencia Polivalente de San Nicolás, Ñuble Region.

The mission of The Creators National Award (Premio Nacional Los Creadores) is to highlight the best digital projects developed by talented school children throughout Chile from 6th grade through senior year of high school. With this, the idea is to “install in the public agenda and in school communities, the importance of developing digital skills.” The second annual version was delivered yesterday at the offices of National Television of Chile (TVN) .The channel organizes the event together with newspaper El Mercurio, Kodea Foundation and Regional Media, and is sponsored by several institutions, including InvestChile.

The first place was obtained by the “Braille Machine Printer” project, developed by students of the Liceo Bicentenario de Excelencia Polivalente de San Nicolás school, located in the Ñuble Region. The machine can produce documents in braille, the “language for the blind,” using recycled printers to deliver a low-cost solution.

The creators of the winning project will travel to Boston in order to learn about Massachusetts’ innovative environment. “We want to promote digital creation and we are aware that the children we are educating today will be working in jobs that we can’t even imagine, so advancing in technology is key,” said the Minister of Education, Marcela Cubillos.

The director of InvestChile, Cristián Rodríguez Chiffelle, attended the award ceremony and handed out medals to the winners of the Los Lagos Region. The school children of the La Capilla rural school, of Isla Tenglo in Puerto Montt, developed the ecological project “What we do with the Island’s garbage.”

“The opportunities will be in all technology-linked careers and that is why it’s important that children and youth are interested in this knowledge, and thus become protagonists of the digital transformation that our country is experiencing,” said the director of InvestChile. In this regard, he noted that leading international technology companies are highly interested in getting set up in countries that have digital talent.

Students from private, public and technical-professional schools, as well as home-educated children, participated. With a total of 408 applications (which included 2,228 children – more than 700 of which came from the Los Ríos Region – compared to 1,340 last year), a project was awarded for each of Chile’s 16 regions, as well as the three best in the country.