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Parent's Guide to Highway to Undercity

What is Hack Club?

Hack Club is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, whose mission is to foster a generation of coders, makers, builders, and founders. Hack Club's online community has a network of more than 50,000 high school students from around the world.

Hack Club programs are free and accessible to all students. Highway to Undercity is a Hack Club program, where students are supported to create real hardware projects.

Hack Club is supported by many notable figures in the tech industry, including GitHub founder Tom Preston-werner, Dell Founder Michael Dell, as well as executives at Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and GitHub.

What is Highway?

Highway is a hardware electronics program where we give out grants to teenagers to build hardware projects! From now until July 31, your child can make as many hardware projects as they want - and we'll fund up to 350 USD per project.

What is Undercity?

Undercity is a 4-day, in-person hardware hackathon event for high school students at GitHub HQ! Your child will get together with other teens from all over the world to try to make an electronics project in under 72 hours.

Undercity is invite-only; in order to recieve an invitation, your child will need to get to 12 points through Highway. You earn points through making projects!

Here are some video documentaries of previous Hack Club events:

  • Juice: make a game, spend a week in Shanghai!
  • Scrapyard: a 24h event to build your scrappiest ideas
  • Apocalypse: a 44h event where you build to survive a zombie apocalypse
  • The Boreal Express: a 7-day event on a train across Canada

Hackathons are lifechanging - it's the turning point for a lot of people to fall in love with electronics. Meeting so many people from different countries and being able to have 1-on-1, in-person conversations is really eye-opening; especially for most teenagers who have yet to see much of the world.

Undercity is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where your child will be able to meet very skilled teenagers from around the world, work with them to build a project together, and show off what they made to industry leaders - all in a safe and friendly enviorment. It's the largest hardware hackathon, and we will provide the proper tools and equipment (soldering station, 3d printers, hundreds of microcontrollers) for your child to use.

What are the costs associated?

Participation is entirely free! Meals and activities during Undercity are covered. Participants are generally responsible for their own travel to San Francisco, although we do offer travel stipends.

Safety

Hack Club is committed to creating a safe and comfortable environment for students at our events. During the event, a toll-free staff helpline (+1 855-625-HACK) will be available 24/7 for you to contact us if needed.

On security

There will be security guards 24/7 around the venue from both Hack Club and GitHub. Your child will not be able to leave the venue unless they have a freedom wavier signed. There will be curfew; nobody will be allowed in or out of the venue at the scheduled time block.

Staff will be present at all times to supervise. Everyone who enters the venue will be ID checked.

This is a safe space for all students. We aim for a gender-balanced community, and there will be gender-separated spaces for participants to sleep in at the event.

Participants should bring:

  • ID (needs to be government issued; for check-in)
  • Laptop (and charger)
  • Water bottle
  • Any hardware they want to use (although we will have tons provided at Undercity)
  • Their hardware project from Highway to showcase it to others! (if possible)
  • Clothes for 3 nights
  • Toiletries - toothbrush, toothpaste, any hygiene products
  • Sleeping bag

We'll send out a more detailed packing list closer to event!

How do I know this is legit?

Hack Club has run many events before - you can watch recaps on our Youtube channel. We have many donors that make programs like this possible. This event is supported by GitHub, who is hosting us in their headquarters for this event. Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder of GitHub, has also given us a shoutout on Twitter.

Travel

When your child reaches 8 points, we will send them a Travel Form to fill out.

If you're arriving by flight, land at SFO airport.

Visa information

If your child is traveling internationally, they may need either an ESTA or a visa based on their country of citizenship. Meeting the requirements to enter the United States is the responsibility of the attendee, and you are encouraged to do your own research.

If your child requires a Letter of Invitation from Hack Club, they can let us know in the Travel Form.

Visa expenses will not be paid by Hack Club under any circumstances.

Travel Stipends

We are giving out limited travel stipends; see the Undercity page for details.

Your child will be reimbursed the travel stipend amount after they reach 12 points and finish their projects.

Travelling by car, bus, or train? The Hack Club Gas Fund can reimburse your costs! However, you'll still need an invite to come.

Key Personnel

Who can I contact for more information?

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email: alexren@hackclub.com

We will also have multiple Parents Calls on Zoom for more general information, a few weeks before the event.