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Foundation reports

British Council

Bulgaria

British Council is driving advocacy and implementation programmes for the BBC micro:bit in Bulgarian schools, community groups and grassroots projects.

two young boys working on Makecode

Bulgarian children using Makecode

British Council Bulgaria support teachers with micro:bit through Core Skills programmes, library and science programmes with English language learning.

The micro:bit is considered an excellent way to introduce children, many of whom live in remote or disadvantaged areas, to technology while opening future possibilities for career opportunities in IT and computing.

European Capital of Culture

The southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv was the European Capital of Culture in 2019, an initiative which celebrated cultural, historical and educational events throughout the city. Many local projects were developed as part of this initiative, including “Socialising the river Plovdiv”, a central project supported by the British Council. This project incorporated the UN’s Sustainable Development Global Goals (SDGs) & the Micro:bit Educational Foundation's do your :bit campaign, supported by Arm and World's Largest Lesson in partnership with Unicef.

By participating in this iniaitive, local children were given the opportunity to identify problems in their town, such as rubbish polluting the river, and use the micro:bit to develop solutions to solve these problems.

Impact and results

Support for the micro:bit in Bulgaria is driven by the British Council, British Embassy, Microsoft and local government to bring the device into schools and cross-curricular contexts, with a potential schools' programme in discussion with the Ministry of Education.

Microsoft Bulgaria work closely with British Council as an active partner promoting the micro:bit. Through the Hacking STEM programme, which is being introduced as extracurricular activities at schools, children across Bulgaria are taking part in coding activities topics such as waves, seismographs and shark movement.

Teacher recognition

In 2019, in the small town of Kyustendil in western Bulgaria, the STEM high school “Professor Emanuil Ivanov” was awarded a second Google Computer Science Education grant in 2019 to develop coding lessons for beginners using the micro:bit.