At the beginning of the spring, TechnoMagicLand, the interactive children center at Sofia Tech Park hosted the award ceremony of the National Student Competition for green innovative ideas “Young innovator” organized by PostScriptum Ventures, with support from the Ministry of Education and Science.
The mission of the competition is to provoke children’s thinking towards environmental protection, to encourage them to focus their attention on real and practical solutions that could contribute to improving the conditions and environment in which we live. The aim is to enable further implementation of the projects, but also to unlock the curiosity of the participants towards sustainable development as a principle of uniting the environmental, social and economic.
The award ceremony was held in TechnoMagicLand Demonstration Hall, which welcomed over 100 students and their teachers. The remarkable presenters, Mariya and Bogomila, from the team at PostScriptum Ventures, the main initiators and inspirers of the competition, made the ceremony brilliant. The authoritative jury, which included TechnoMagicLand director Angel Bachvarov, paid attention to every aspect that would make the realization of ideas successful. The final was made in the intrinsic style of the “territory for the curious” – with attractive and exciting demonstration specially prepared for the guests of the event by physicist Kaloyan Genkov, part of the team of the interactive children’s center.
More than 900 students from all over the country took part in the competition, divided into two age categories. 7 teams from Sofia, Burgas, Shumen, Sandanski, Vidin, Vratsa, and Pleven reached the finals in the category “Implement a project in a team”. Young innovators presented and elaborated their proposals, as well as financial plans for the realization of the ideas. A sensor box detecting the occurrence of fires, composting, protecting bees, creating generators to power electronic devices and developing an eco-brand of biodegradable cutlery were part of the distinguished projects. The winning team took the grand prize – the realization of the idea within the amount of BGN 5000, as well as a personal scholarship of BGN 500 for each of the participants in the team. The second and third place winners received personal scholarships, certificates, cups and gifts.
Within the drawing category, related to environmental protection, green and sustainable future, the jury, together with a fine arts teacher, ranked ten out of over 500 drawings. Each child from the qualified on the finals won a diploma for participation, BGN 100 personal scholarship as well as a DaVinci Award.
The drawings from the competition are exposed at TechnoMagicLand until end of April, every day (except Monday) from 10:00 to 19:00.
The Children’s Interactive Center has 46 interactive experiments. The exposition consists of curious experiments, interactive installations and experiments in the fields of chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, robotics, optics and other, appropriate for children from 7 to 14+ years, as well as for students from high school with a technical focus and interests. Group visits can be also organized, as well as courses in robotics, engineering and more.