The First National Scientific and Practical Conference "Green Education for a Sustainable Future" was held in Pazardzhik, Bulgaria, last 11 and 12 November 2024.
An EducationforClimate based-event with national impact
The event was organised by the Education for Climate Bulgaria country group coordinators, Grozdena Chalakova, and Miglena Georgieva, 2 passionate and committed Education for Climate members who met via our very platform who decided to take up the challenge of organising a national event to promote green competences and climate change education.
The event was an undeniable success, helping to build capacity in Bulgaria for sustainability education.
Teachers and students coming from different schools of various regions of the country were able to come together to showcase their projects and work together in company of local and national authority representatives.
The power of communities
The event was a perfect demonstration of what our community of practice can generate in terms of capacity-building through the efforts of active members of the community at national level.
The event was an opportunity to identify innovative green education projects and their authors, teachers and pupils, to give them the visibility they deserve, to enable their authors to exchange ideas and good practice, to network and envision future projects in collaboration with the institutions. Not to mention the joy and enthusiasm of the participants who were delighted to be able to meet each other.
The conference took place over 2 days and aimed to contribute to transforming education system through climate learning, drawing public and education community attention to the climate crisis and the need for action, giving participants the opportunity to familiarise themselves with GreenComp, the GreenComp community, and the Climate Education Coalition.
It was also about other EU programmes such as Scientix and the European Climate Pact, with the aim of creating constructive synergies between all these European levers for cross-disciplinary and cross-national actions in support of learning for the green transition.
An engaging event reaching a wide audience
Participants could follow presentations to learn about the initiatives, contribute to scientific workshop with scientists, and attend the award ceremonies of the 3 competitions organised prior to the event: a teachers projects competition/a student’s projects competition/and a photo competition.
Authorities were duly represented, both from local and national level, with the notable presence of the deputy Minister of Education and Science of Bulgaria, the Chairperson of the Bulgarian Teacher’s Union, the mayor of Pazardzhik and the regional Governor of the District, and various representatives of education and environment local authorities.
The event has been nicely covered by the press, as it can be seen for example here, here or here.
You can learn more about the details of the event and the competitions by looking at the dashboard created in this occasion in the Bulgaria Country group.
Congratulations again to Grozdena Chalakova and Miglena Georgieva on this very interesting initiative, which we hope will inspire other members in other Member States!
I wish you all the best dear Grozdena, and am fully confident this is only the start of something bigger!