AIYA Programming

AIYA Programming centers around hands-on experiences designed to equip students with tools for AI literacy, safety, and effectiveness.

AIYA Programming equips students with foundational AI literacy and fluency in essential AI skills and techniques through experiential programming while advancing conversations on best-practices at and between schools around the world. Our programming is structured around three connected program pillars:

AIYA Literacy provides a structured program of AI challenges & problem sets that allow students to realize AI’s vast potential and surprising limitations through direct, hands-on experiences.

AIYA Global Hackathon presents participants with the opportunity to compete and collaborate with students around the world in a first-of-its-kind international hackathon dedicated to building and applications and models using AI.

AIYA Impact is an opportunity for students to showcase creative, research, and impact projects that use AI or center AI as their subject.

Our spirit is fundamentally hands-on and experiential, prioritizing learning by doing. Our programs are designed to empower students across schools around the world and to provide space for students to innovate and collaborate using AI. Ultimately, our aim is to build a vibrant, self-sustaining student-led community that supports the exploration of best-practices around the cutting-edge uses of AI in learning.

1. AIYA Literacy Program

March through April 2026

The AIYA Literacy program consists of two components – AIYA Literacy Week and regular AIYA Challenges.

AIYA Literacy Week (March) is our annual kick-off event. It is an invitation to AIYA members and the wider community to participate in structured AI experiences that build fundamental AI literacy and practical AI skills. It consists of a week-long series of AI exercises and activities in three core formats to provide students with critical, direct experience and insight.

Literacy Challenges inform participants on how to use AI safely and effectively through AI, illustrating important principals such as hallucination and the importance of having a well-defined stopping rule through guided, direct experiences.

Prompt Engineering Challenges educate participants in specific techniques to use AI more effectively to amplify creativity, quality and insight while accelerating discovery, productivity and stress-testing solutions.

Modeling and Building Challenges foster collaboration and critical thinking skills as participants come together to build a jointly created functional deliverable.

AIYA Literacy Week Format

March 2026 - (1 Week)

Monday (Lunch): Kickoff - Team and interested community members tackle initial challenge problems.
Throughout the Week/Weekend: Participants continue to work on problems independently or in groups.
Following Monday (Lunch): Conclusion - Participants come back together to finalize the problems, work through activities, and share their solutions.

The AIYA Challenges (March through April) provides AIYA members with a focused opportunity to practice and hone their AI skills in weekly club meetings. The program presents AIYA teams with problems designed to refine their AI literacy and prompt engineering fluency on the road to competing in the AIYA Global Hackathon. This provides a steady, low-stakes practice environment for advanced learners to achieve better results faster and improve planning, implementation and execution in a team setting. The program also introduces and reinforces advanced prompt engineering techniques (such as applying templates, using personae to validate stories, etc.) to leverage AI as a safe and effective cognitive partner and tool.

AIYA Challenges Format

March through April 2026 (Bi-Weekly Cycle)

Friday (Lunch): Challenge Kick Off - The team and interested community members receive the week's challenge problems and begin work.
Following Week: Continued Work - Participants continue to solve problems independently or in collaboration with colleagues at their home school and peers at AIYA Club Chapters around the world.
Following Friday (Lunch): Submission & Debrief - Participants come back together to finish problems, submit their solutions, and receive a debrief on best practices and techniques used.

2. AIYA Global Hackathon Program

April 2026

The AIYA Global AI Hackathon (April) is an intensive, collaborative event designed to push students' AI application skills in a competitive, time-constrained environment.

The focus of the AIYA Global Hackathon is on building real-world solutions using AI technologies. Since this is an international event utilizing remote conferencing platforms like Zoom, the format is asynchronous to accommodate participants across multiple time zones. The goals of the event are to foster collaboration, encourage high-level problem-solving, and demonstrate the effectiveness of AI application under pressure, allowing flexible participation regardless of location.

The AIYA Global Hackathon centers around two competitive components:

App Building: Teams conceive, design, and build functional projects using AI within the dedicated timeframe. Projects will revolve around creating a web or mobile application that solves a specific problem using AI.

Model/Simulation Building: Focus on the technical development and optimization of predictive models (e.g., classification → generalization- → prediction) of complex phenomena to address a provided challenge using data provided.

AIYA Global Hackation Format

April 2026 (48-Hour Asynchronous Global Format)

Friday (Time Zone TBD): Opening Zoom/Digital Kickoff - Global introduction, receipt of the challenge prompt, and access to collaboration channels and resources. The 48-hour clock begins.
48-Hour Period (Friday to Sunday): Asynchronous Hacking - Teams code, design, and build their solutions independently. Mentors are available virtually (asynchronously and through scheduled Zoom office hours).
Sunday (Time Zone TBD): Submissions Deadline - Final projects, documentation, and demo videos must be submitted digitally to the judging platform.
Following Week: Judging and Finalist Selection - A selection committee reviews the submissions asynchronously.
Following Week: Virtual Closing Ceremony and Demos - Finalists present their solutions via a scheduled Zoom call that is recorded for asynchronous viewing, and winners are announced.

3. AIYA Impact Program

January through May 2026

The AIYA Impact Program (January through May) is dedicated to supporting independent study and in-class projects that feature multiple applications of AI.

The goal of the program is to foster agency in learning by leveraging AI as an effective cognitive partner to broaden the scope of inquiry, accelerate iteration, and amplify creativity and impact while preserving essential cognitive and critical effort. Participants' projects will be published through the AIYA Website with accompanying student videos. Outstanding submissions will be presented as part of the AIYA Impact Symposium. Participants are encouraged to take on ambitious projects that demonstrate their learning and use of AI.

Projects must actively use AI for one or more key phases: framing, planning, research, hypothesis/thesis formulation, modeling, validation/disconfirmation of results or as the direct subject of the project itself.

AIYA Impact welcomes submissions in three project categories:

Creative Writing: Using generative AI to assist in drafting, world-building, or plot-testing novels, scripts, or poetry.

Research: Applying AI to analyze data, simulate complex systems, or accelerate the literature review process.

Entrepreneurship/Real-World Impact: Developing and implementing actionable solutions for real-world business and community problems.

AIYA Impact Format

January through May 2026

February: Project Proposal/Abstract Submissions - Students submit initial ideas and scope for new projects or projects that are already in progress.
February - April: Work Period - Dedicated space to connect and collaborate is provided for ongoing project development, collaboration and mentorship.
April: Final Project Submissions - Completed projects, including documentation and final models/applications, are submitted.
May: AIYA Impact Symposium - Featured projects are selected by committee and showcased in-person and over Zoom
June: Projects Published - All qualifying projects and findings are compiled and published on web for the community and future members.