After the official opening of the Hackathon and the special welcome by the well-known in Hollywood Bulgarian actor Dimitar Marinov, the students immersed themselves in the topic of media literacy and its importance. They spent the next 4 days in meetings with inspiring mentors and hard work. On the finals, all 14 teams presented innovative solutions to the problems of fake news, online communication, hate speech, critical thinking and information chaos.

Nearly 100 students from all over Bulgaria, full of enthusiasm to gain new knowledge and to win, took part in the competition. Not only did they want to create meaningful campaigns with interesting and creative content, but they also showed that they had the skills to do so. 14 diverse and meaningful projects were presented attractively and convincingly to a competent jury. The teams have developed digital, meaningful and colorful distribution materials, strategies for engaging target groups and most importantly great ideas. 

For the members of the jury it was much more difficult to decide which the best projects are than to train the participants how to develop them. However, they performed both tasks. Nadia Obretenova from the Bulgarian National Television, Yavor Gochev from the Rinker Center for entrepreneurship and training, Natanail Stefanov from SofiaTech, Ana Aleksieva from Fine Acts, Georgi Apostolov from the National Center for Safe Internet, Denitsa Lozanova from the Sofia Development Association and Ivaylo Ivanov from DZZD Obuchenie were the experts in the field, which had to make the hard decision.

Meet the winning teams:
• First prize for the MEDIAcated team from PMG "Prof. Emanuil Ivanov", Kyustendil - BGN 3,500.
• Second prize for the team "Our Voice" from 30 High School "Bratya Miladinovi", Sofia - BGN 3,000.

2 third prizes of BGN 2,250:
Team "NPMG" from NPMG "Acad. L. Chakalov", Sofia
• EG Power team from EG "Acad. L. Stoyanov", Blagoevgrad


2 fifth prizes of BGN 750:
• Team "Ladies' Gambit" from 119. Sofia University "Acad. Mihail Arnaudov ”, Sofia
• Team "KUISBI" from SU "Lyuben Karavelov", Plovdiv

The hearts of the audience were won by the team "Messengers" from the National School of Finance and Economics, Sofia. They are the favorite of over 1,200 voters and due to this reason won a prize of BGN 1,500.

Although the Media and Information Literacy Hackathon is over, we have yet to reap the benefits. The won funds will be used by the teams to carry out their campaigns in the period February 5, 2021 - May 5, 2021, and then the best realized campaign will win BGN 3,500! Good luck to all!

Follow the facebook pages SofiaLab и IN-EDU project to learn more about the development of the campaigns.

The hackathon is organized by Sofia Development Association and DZZD Obuchenie.