Un click para Suecia - A Click for Sweden

This is the story of three argentine students: Nicolás Komañski, Nicolás Alvarez and Ricardo Ferro Moreno. They are students of the Universidad Nacional del Sur, more exactly of the Department of Computer Sciences and Engineering (Exact Sciences Area). The university is placed in Bahia Blanca, south of Buenos Aires.

Nowadays, almost anyone knows the situation in Argentina. To progress in any field implies much effort, tenacity and a great quota of hope.

Our three students recently competed in the Regional Instance of the ACM ICPC competition (International Collegiate Programming Contest). They concluded the contest in the third position at regional level and acceded to the fourth position concerning all South America. That classified them -inmediately- for the world-wide instance, something very commendable considering the educative system situation in Argentina. The competition has as primary objective the resolution of problems of mathematic/algorithmic nature. In the contest, each team - composed by three students from the same university - is provided with a single computer and five hours to solve an amount of problems that varies between 8 and 11. Only 100 teams of almost 7000 recruits from all over the world accede – finally - to this instance. This international competition is the greatest, oldest and most prestigious in its type and is supported by IBM. Its objective consists of promoting the creativity, innovation and the work in equipment for the development of new programs of computation and allows the students to measure its ability to act under pressure.

They have an enormous desire to go to Sweden to participate in the competition that will take place - next April - in Stockholm. They gained their place there and they deserve to make their dream come true. Being in this situation demanded a concerted effort of them and now all that work is in risk. The organization of the competition pays all the expenses related to the stay in Stockholm during this event, but does not cover the passages. The cost of them is - approximately - 6000 USD (dollars) and they haven’t this amount of money. They are waiting for some answers about government financial support but they need a little more secure here to focus and train for the contest, and to speak about responsibilities wouldn’t change anything of the really important matter here: To help them to get to Stockholm.

It is not only they who fill us with pride, because there are two other teams that qualified at the Argentine World instance: A team from Universidad de Buenos Aires - U.B.A. - (ranked # 1 in the competition) and another team from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, who reached the second place.

Nicolás, Ricardo and Nicolás - Team “Bahía” at the contest - are trying to reach the media to tell they story in Argentina. They have acceded to some local radios, the local tv and even some newspapers articles in different places around the country. They are trying to be heard by the authorities and – obviously – looking for unofficial sponsors.

The good news is that we can - also - help them to reach their goal just by clicking at a banner or button that redirects us to their blog where we can click in every AdSense advertising to get them some cents closer to Stockholm.

If you want to help them a little more, make a brand new post in your blog or site, telling their history and embebbing a button or banner to post it in a “html widget” at your blog/web.

You can pick the banner or button that You like the most in their blog: http://unclickparasuecia.blogspot.com

Thank you very much for reading this post! And most important, for helping these boys and our common future…

E-migrad@