Sofia Development Association as a major organizer of the IN-EDU international student camp accepted the challenge to make an online event for young people in the presence of a huge online fatigue and managed to make it exciting and interesting!

 “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn,” once said Benjamin Franklin. Obviously all of the speakers of IN-EDU camp agree with the quote since they managed to make such engaging presentations and discussions with the 60 students from Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy and Slovenia, who took part in the international camp. The projects of the students on the tasks, given by professionals from NGOs and Business sector, are a solid proof as well!

In two days - 14th and 15th of May 2021 the IN-EDU team managed to meet the students with Diego Ciulli from Public Policy and Government Affairs at Google Italia, the Common frames team, who are experts in the field of video making and 5 motivational speakers.

The students got acquainted with the topic of “Greenwashing”, presented by Lubomila Jordanova - the founder and CEO of Plan A, a Berlin-based startup developing an end-to-end platform that enables companies to measure, monitor and reduce their environmental footprint and improve their ESG performance. After her speech, they created a Kahoot questionnaire which could help anyone to better understand the essence and the consequences of Greenwashing.

It is said that “Good things come to those who wait” and after the presentation of Alberto Puliafito - editor-in-chief and co-founder of Slow News, the first Italian slow journalistic project, the students know that same is valid for quality news. Slowly but surely they dived into the topic of “Media Literacy and the new way of journalism against fake news” and the result of the discussion is clear – extremely well-prepared educational campaign, especially designed for kids aged 3-8 years with cartoons and a fun story, which could make people from all ages to support the idea of Slow News.

The students are also aware of the importance of Equality and Data literacy for contrasting disinformation on and discrimination of migrants thanks to Andrea Menapace - director of Open Migration. He explained well that stereotypes should be contrasted in order for the people to overcome them. The students managed to create a video, which presents the story of how stereotypes originated and a plan on how to distribute it widely.

After hearing out Hrvoje Harac, who works as a project and development manager at Udruga Pobjede and his field “Education on protection and rights of animals with the aim of encouraging the development of compassion, solidarity and active participation in society”, the students created a social network campaign, which could touch the heart of anyone – a good visual material + the right message = the new to make a change in the world and they put this equation into practice.

Last but not least – they learned more about FOMO - Fear of missed opportunities represents a relatively new form of social anxiety,defined as an individual's concern about missing pleasant, satisfying, social events. They presented the topic with the support of a cute chicken which definitely knows how to transform the Fear of missing out into a Joy of missing out and it is ready to share his knowledge with people who suffer from FOMO. The chicken is designed by one of the students and it is loved by anyone who has seen it.

According to the participants, it is great that none of them missed the opportunity to join the IN-EDU international student’s camp. They not only learned and had fun, but also contributed to make a positive change in the world.