Business Incubator – Gotse Delchev organized the first Advisory group meeting in Bulgaria on 11th of June, hosted by Regional Department of Education – Blagoevgrad. 10 representatives of educational institutions, organizations supporting social entrepreneurship and business, students and teachers from secondary schools formed the Bulgarian Advisory Group.

In an open and very active discussion the AG members provided a positive feedback on the innovative Innoschool Learning System (ILS) and generated ideas to support the process of ILS development and implementation of the pilot training.

To increase efficiency and involve everybody, the participants worked in 3 parallel group sessions: students, teachers and stakeholders related to social entrepreneurship. The students emphasized on the need of attractive, intuitive, animated serious game related to the practice. It should be dynamic, to engage students’ attention. Concerning the school competition it should keep the balance not focusing only on winning and shifting from the main goal social needs. The students commented also that quiz shouldn’t be used in the game in any case. Social media could facilitate the communication amongst the different teams and schools during the piloting. It would be good to have a small award after completing each module as a motivation to continue and a complex final award announced at a common closing event. The group of teachers presented their suggestion to include visits to social enterprises, meetings with entrepreneurs and target groups with social needs, to have active communication among teachers despite of their competition. Teachers’ motivation to participate in the piloting could be higher if they receive qualification credits (recognized certificate for entrepreneurship qualification) for participating in the training for trainers and work with ILS. They saw potential for extending ILS and growing its impact by sharing knowledge and inspiration for social initiatives/business with the community through social media. A simple additional entertaining ILS module for younger students (less than 16 year old) with appropriate content and settings could be developed to increase the social and educational impact in communities. Limitations of the class lessons might be a challenge for the teachers.

The socially engaged group highlighted how important is for the students to develop empathy and to feel the social needs. Study visits in social enterprises, presentations by social entrepreneurs, or short video clips about social themes could be incorporated in the training.  Networking could grow the success of the InnoSchool learning system, achieving bigger social impact.

AG members will have their next meeting this autumn to go further in the development of ILS.