Finalist at Champion Trials

On 22–23 November 2025, Digital School ran one of its most ambitious competitions yet: Champion Trials, a 48-hour hackathon with over 600 applicants from Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, and Egypt (Cairo).

The format was different from anything I had competed in before. Students were split into four Houses — Speedster, Hipster, Shadow, and Engineer — each judged on a mix of creativity, technical skill, and how well the project tied into the theme.

The Project: HumanityConnect

I built HumanityConnect, a full-stack platform that connects volunteers with local community activities — food donations, animal shelters, soup kitchens, and more. Users can register, browse activities, join them, and receive a certificate of participation once completed.

The whole thing was built in 48 hours with PHP and MySQL, with a custom front end on top. You can find the full project in my work section.

Shadow House Finalist

HumanityConnect was selected as a finalist in the Shadow House, which honestly felt unreal given the level of the competition. The final round took place on 3 December 2025 during the Champions Webinar.

What I Took From It

Building a real, useful product in 48 hours teaches you what actually matters. You drop the perfect database schema, you drop the prettiest CSS, and you focus on the user journey. If the user can register, join an activity, and get a certificate — you have a product. Everything else is polish.