Students from Carlow, Offaly and Kilkenny have won the top prizes in Ireland's national creative thinking programme The Big Idea.
Team Community Cara from Borris Vocational School won the overall award.
They explored the issue of hidden poverty and developed an idea for an app to support people living in poverty in Ireland to help connect them with local support.
Those judging the competition said the standard of projects submitted this year in the Youthreach and Community Training Centre (CTC) pilot programme was outstanding.
In recognition of the innovation shown across this programme two additional Big Idea national prizes were awarded.
The Youthreach & CTC Climate Change winner was Team YR - Kilkenny Youthreach, who designed an app that would use augmented reality to educate primary school students about the impacts of climate change in their local environment.
The Youthreach & CTC Mental Health Award was won by Team HopOut from Tullamore Community Training Centre in Offaly, who proposed a community hub promoted by a drink's coaster with a QR code to help support younger men with their mental health.
The winners were announced last Friday at the end-of-year online Big Showcase for the multi-award-winning programme.
The Big Idea is delivered through the Leaving Cert Applied (LCA) and Transition Year (TY) programmes, as well as an expanded pilot Youthreach and Community Training Centre (CTC) programme.
It was delivered across 22 counties this year, with a successful pilot programme trialled in Northern Ireland.
Students were tasked with working through the four Ds of the creative process – discover, define, develop and deliver - focusing on solutions for issues they identified as major stressors in their lives.
These were mental health, climate change, hidden poverty, displaced people, and diversity and inclusion - all aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
With the help of hundreds of Big Idea mentors from a range of sectors, they develop a digital experience, product, service, space or place, or a tech solution to tackle that issue.
EPAM Ireland is a partner of The Big Idea and provided 13 mentors to work alongside the students.
Martin Byrne, VP and Country Manager at EPAM Ireland, said that partnering with The Big Idea was a no-brainer for the company.
"Equipping the next generation of students with high-level problem-solving skills to tackle complex global issues like climate change and hidden poverty is exactly what Ireland and the technology industry needs right now," he said.
"Highlighted by the fact that climate change was the number one topic that these students wanted to address, sustainability is a huge issue in modern society and one that we are passionate about in EPAM," he added.
