Code4Future connects Ukrainian students to research labs in Switzerland

Eurochild member Star for Life Ukraine held a national coding tournament for children across Ukraine and allowed its winning team to attend one of the world's leading technical universities, showing how investing in children today also means investing in Ukraine's reconstruction.

For the third consecutive year, Star for Life Ukraine ran Code4Future, a national team programming tournament open to schoolchildren across the country. This year, more than 100 teams competed, working through real-world IT challenges and measuring themselves against the country's most driven young coders. Reaching the final takes months of preparation and teamwork; for the winners, it also marks the start of an international journey.

In August 2026, the winning team, "Rohatyntsi" – four schoolchildren from the Ivano-Frankivsk, Zakarpattia and Rivne regions travelled to Switzerland. At ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, the team saw what modern science looks like not from a textbook, but from the inside. Over several days, they toured research labs, were introduced to work in cybersecurity, computer systems and nanotechnology, and spoke directly with scientists developing tomorrow's technology. From the university, the itinerary continued to Google Zürich, where the team saw the other side of the technology world – how scientific knowledge becomes products used by millions of people. Throughout the trip, the Embassy of Ukraine in Switzerland joined the programme and met with the team, a signal to the students that their achievement is part of a much larger story of Ukrainian youth continuing to learn and build a future despite the war.

"We want them (children) to see the next horizon: world-class universities, laboratories, and the people building tomorrow's solutions. Bringing our winners to ETH Zürich for the second year in a row changes what they believe is possible for themselves," says Myroslava Oseredchuk, Head of Education and Programmes at Star for Life Ukraine.

For Ukraine, this is fundamentally a question of the right to education. Every child is entitled to a quality education regardless of where they live or what disrupts their schooling – a right the war puts under direct, daily strain. National research shows how deep that strain runs: a nationwide study of school administrations found that 82% report educational losses among their students because of the war, and an annual survey of teachers found that 91% saw student performance decline this year – with loss of motivation, not lack of ability, named as the single biggest cause. Children today are learning under very different conditions: in large cities and small communities, in regions that regularly come under shelling, in families displaced from their homes.

Star for Life Ukraine works directly in that gap: competitions like Code4Future don't just occupy children's time, they give them something education under war often struggles to sustain – motivation, mentors, connection to the students community and a reason to catch up and keep going. Children are not just Ukraine's future; they are its present, and what is invested in them now will shape what that future looks like.