Two Bulgarian students won the national contest for a videoclip related to the equal access to primary education. Their prize was a 16 day visit to the African country Eritrea together with young people from 5 other EU countries. Pavel Penchev and Evgeni Todorov are third-year students in the New Bulgarian University. Their videoclip reached the final of the contest together with 5 other clips. The contest was organized by Know and Can Association under a project, funded by the European Commission and implemented in Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
Many children in Eritrea walk each day for 10 km to go to the bus stop and then catch the bus to school. When they are not at school even the 8 years olds must work in hard physical conditions, according to Pavel and Evgeni. Eritrea has been independent since 1993 when it separated from Ethiopia. The country is extremely poor, in most of the villages there is no electricity, many of the schools are built by foreign non-governmental organizations.
The boys came back from Eritrea with thousands of photos and several hours of recorded video. They will present an exhibition of photos and video from their trip during the European week for equal access to primary education. This forum is beginning on the 15-th of September at Universiada hall until the 18-th of September.
The European week is the final stage of the A.W.A.R.E. project, funded by the European Commission. The aim of this 18 month project was to increase and enhance the public awareness in Europe over the topic of equal access to education by creating a network of NGOs and public institutions. Equal access to education is the second objective in the Declaration of the Millennium, signed by 189 countries (including Bulgaria) in 2000. The project was focused on the Sahara region.