Over 80 schools enter Telenor’s Digital Classroom contest

Over 80 schools from 41 Bulgarian cities entered Telenor’s Digital Classroom contest, double the number of participants compared to last year. The initiative is aimed at creating modern school environment and the winning projects will be granted total funding of up to BGN 200,000.

This year’s edition of the contest started at the end of May and it was open to all public schools in the country. The largest number of entries came from Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna, Vidin and Pernik. All project proposals in the contest will be evaluated based on the predefined criteria by a jury consisting of representatives of Telenor, the academic community and NGO sector in the July – October period. At the next stage of the contest shortlisted finalists will be invited to present their ideas live in front of the jury.

The winning projects will be officially announced no later than 30th November 2016. Each of them will receive funding of up to 90% of its total cost and up to BGN 100,000 for creating modern school environment with the use of up-to-date technologies in order to increase the efficiency of the educational process.

The Digital Classroom contest is held for a second consecutive year. A total of 37 schools participated in the first edition of the contest in 2015. Then, two Bulgarian schools - “Lyuben Karavelov” school in Koprivshtitsa and High-school of Mathematics “Dr. Peter Beron” in Varna – were awarded a total of almost BGN 190,000. Their projects are now being implemented and are to be completed by the end of the year.

The initiative is part of Telenor’s long-term commitment to support Bulgarian education and young people. In March 2015, the company donated BGN 107,000 for the modernization of the Leadership Center in the 19th Elin Pelin School in Sofia. In 2016 the company provided fully operational telecom equipment and refurbished a lab in the Technical University of Sofia, thus granting about BGN 45,000.