The difficult transition of Bulgaria caused a serious decline in education and value crisis of the new generations. The image of science and researchers, teachers and educational institutions was also damaged during this period. During the project life-time, several milestones for nurturing new values and changing the image of science and researchers in economy and society were put in place. The synergy and complementarity of all project activities, combining excellent ideas, research topics and research teams, and ensuring support of a large network of stakeholders and media partners ensured the K-TRIO 5 impact on:
- increasing public recognition of researchers and the importance of their profession – by presenting researchers and excellent achievements in research projects funded under H2020 and EU Structural Funds, especially focusing on CoE/CoC; organising knowledge fair with EU funded projects in R&I, design of videos of researchers and projects and disseminate them online;
- deepening the public understanding on R&I contribution to economy and society, and EU role – by organising competitions on scientific topics; face-to-face meetings with researchers, pre-events and debates with stakeholders, teachers, and students; Open Days/Labs; focus on real cases and applications of R&I and the CoE/CoC contribution for regional development; design and dissemination of digital materials (text, video, audio) and interviews with researcher, incl. MSC fellows, as well as specific rubrics in “Science” magazine.
- raising the curiosity and creativity of young people, and attracting them to STEM, and R&I career – by implementing a long-term strategy for nurturing new culture; involvement of various stakeholders in nation-wide and regional debates on new skills agenda, and improving STEM education; involving researchers and pupils in discussion on R&I, organizing High School Students activities; Open Days/Labs, and Career Fairs, and specific programme K-TRIO for kids with entertaining and educative experiments, demonstrations and hand-on experiments and visits in museums.
Last, but not least, the project contributed also for better understanding of the European Union among the general public by dissemination of dedicated materials on EU using online and offline communication channels, organisation of dedicated discussions on HRS4R at pre-events in Ruse, Stara Zagora, Plovdov, Burgas and Sofia, as well as including specific sessions during the ERN events on projects funded by EU, on EURAXESS activities, etc.
