Telenor Bulgaria wins silver and bronze Stevie® Awards in 2020 International Business Awards

Telenor Bulgaria has won a Silver Stevie® Award in Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year in Europe category and a Bronze Stevie® Award in Most Valuable Corporate Response to COVID-19 in the 17th Annual International Business Awards®.

Telenor Bulgaria was awarded a Silver Stevie® Award for its long-running Safer Internet program that included multiple campaigns, activities, trainings aimed at providing children with knowledge about the dangers online, and open educational resources for children, parents and teachers.

In 2020, Safer Internet program continued developing online with the series of educational videos on online safety and digital literacy for kids available on www.ottebzavisi.net. Developed in partnership with the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre, the video lessons are targeted at children and teenagers. However, they are a useful tool for their parents, teachers and all internet users as well. Part of the topics cover by the open educational resources are the identification and protection from fake profiles online, protection and management of children’s smart devices, Web of Trust, fake news identification, etc.

„The campaign is carried out perfectly. Keeping children safe online is a key priority and should be one of every socially responsible company, especially of telecoms - the main channels of internet usage. Congrats again on the great campaign!“, commented one of the judges.

The Bronze Stevie® Award was awarded to Telenor Bulgaria for its multiple internal and external activities in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The operator has made a series of donations for medical equipment, protection masks, and smartphones for first-line health workers’ safer work and computers that provided 3 schools and one center for children at risk with the ability to go back to school remotely. Telenor also held an internal donation campaign to provide food for families in need and provided remote mental health support and various other resources to its employees during the lockdown. Telenor was the first company in Bulgaria to share best practices and valuable know-how on its business continuity plan at special webinar for all its business partners. At the beginning of the pandemic Telenor’s prime-time TV ad called for people to stay home with footage shot by its leadership and employees from their homes and loaded its website with free lockdown survival content. “Valuable and impressive support during this difficult time. Well done”, said the jury.

“Telenor is committed to establishing a sector-leading approach to social responsibility programs which draw clear and measurable impact. While contributing to society, our team continues to deliver top quality services over a reliably high-performing network,” said Jason King, Telenor Bulgaria CEO.

More than 3,800 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, including Company of the Year, Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year, and Executive of the Year, among others. This year’s competition also featured a number of categories to recognize organizations’ and individuals’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The International Business Awards®, are the world's premier business awards program, and the only completely international program honoring achievement and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide. The International Business Awards®, is one of the Stevie Awards eight business awards competitions, staged for 18 years in 2020.