Hacking Heroes was a Polish–Portuguese project that used programming to help young people learn how to learn, solve problems and build things together.
It ran from 2016 to 2017, bringing together participants and educators in Kalisz and Espinho. After several months of local workshops and online contact, the two groups met in Porto for a five-day hackathon.
How it began
The project grew from conversations between programmer Dominik Kościelak and cultural manager Aleksandra Kubiak. They wanted to create something that treated programming not simply as a technical skill, but as a practical way to develop curiosity, independence and confidence.
Aleksandra saw how the idea could become an international Erasmus+ project. She built the partnership around it, brought the Polish and Portuguese organisations together and coordinated the project across both countries.
Dominik then worked with his friend and fellow programmer João Matos to design a programme that could be taught in Kalisz and Espinho at the same time.
Learning by making
Participants learned the foundations of web development by working on ideas of their own. They searched for solutions, experimented, divided larger problems into smaller tasks and shared responsibility with others.
The goal was not to cover a programming language feature by feature. It was to give participants enough knowledge and confidence to continue learning independently.
In Porto, that approach was put into practice. Polish and Portuguese participants formed international teams and spent five days turning their ideas into working digital projects.
Hackathon, 27/04 - 02/05/2017 PORTO
Making the approach shareable
Hacking Heroes was also intended to reach people beyond the original participant groups.
Academic and specialist in the philosophy of education Radosław Nawrocki advised the team on its teaching methodology and on the materials prepared for teachers and youth workers. His involvement helped ensure that an approach developed by programmers also made educational sense — and that it could be understood, adapted and used by other educators.
The project concluded with methodology workshops and openly licensed learning materials in Polish, Portuguese and English.
What remains
Hacking Heroes ended in 2017, but its story, photographs and educational ideas are preserved here.
This website documents how the project developed, the people who shaped it and what happened when young people from two countries learned and built together.
Partners and funding
The project was initiated by two programmers and delivered with the support of partner organisations in Poland and Portugal, funded through the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Youth programme. Their support was for the 2016–2017 project; none of them supports this archive.
