Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- In 2021, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) established a partnership with BalaTech (www.balatech.org), a multilingual educational platform for children and youth where they can learn programming in an interactive mode. 

BalaTech makes the learning process fun and interesting through gamification. The platform contains 10 learning modules with 175 tasks that users can learn and play for free. For completed tasks, users receive points to unlock the next level game with a variety of virtual settings in which they will continue their learning adventure.

BalaTech, backed by the Japanese government, is recognized by the UNDP "Digital x Scale Accelerator" as one of the ten most effective digital solutions in 2021. Thanks to UNDP, BalaTech provides all educational materials and participation in the 2022 Olympiad free of charge for all schoolchildren. With the help of the UNDP Digital X program, BalaTech has improved the user interface and learning algorithms. What's more, the platform is designed with a gender perspective to encourage more girls to learn programming.

Thanks to this support, BalaTech organizes the International Programming Olympiad in the CIS countries and Eastern Europe. The Olympiad will be held on February 19, 2022 in an online format for 50,000 schoolchildren from grades 5 to 11 from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and other Russian-speaking countries who will compete for the prize $10,000 fund. Anyone with a smartphone (laptop not required) with internet access can access the platform to learn and play from the first levels.

No prior programming knowledge is required to work with the platform.

The age groups are divided as follows:

- junior group from 5th to 7th grades;

- middle group from 8 to 9 classes;

- Senior group from 10th to 11th grade.

The winners will be determined in three age groups and awarded gold, silver and bronze places with the following prizes:

-laptops;

-smartphones;

-discount for studying at universities in Britain;

-discount for studying at universities in Germany;

-discount for studying at American universities;

-testing for free education in Italy;

-discount for studying at Malaysian universities;