From OFFLINE to ONLINE
When 18 year old Elian Monov decided to become a participant in The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award – Bulgaria back in 2019, he never could have foreseen how useful his choice of skill would become…
When Elian started his Award in September 2019, the world had no idea what was just around the corner. Only specialist scientists had ever heard of the deadly virus, COVID-19, and people around the world were continuing on with their lives as they always had been.
For his Skill, Elian wanted to organise interactive meetings, and to learn how to lead interesting events for his friends and community to attend in person. For six months he enjoyed gaining experience in this area and broadening his skillset.
However, as the situation worsened around the world, from 13 March 2020, Elian realised that he would need to drastically rethink the way he was currently doing his Skill section of the Award.
This could not be carried out physically because of the epidemic situation across Bulgaria and, like many other countries around the globe, strict social distancing and lockdown measures were in force.
Therefore he began considering options and together with his Award Leader, they had the idea to organise a video chat for his local community, on a topic “Opportunities from home – #WeWillManageTogether”.
As part of this webinar, Elian also created and presented a Handbook against boredom – opportunities ONline and OFFline. This was aimed at young people who have free time after they have completed their school work, and want to invest this spare time in doing something useful, but aren’t sure what yet.
The Award in Bulgaria have translated the guide so that it can inspire and be used by Award participants in other countries too!
