The First in Bulgaria Legal Hackathon for Students Was Held at the UNWE

The opening of the hackathon was attended by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zahary Tormanov, Dean of the Law Faculty, Prof. Dr. Tsvetana Stoyanova, Vice-Rector for Institutional and Business Cooperation and Student Policies and Bilyana Gyaurova-Vegertseder, Director of BIPI /in the picture below from the left to the right/.

Within a weekend the students from secondary schools in Sofia had to create a game concept related to the judicial system. The type of game, computer, board or other kind depended entirely on their imagination.

The competition was opened by Bilyana Gyaurova-Vegertseder, Director of BIPI, who presented the activities of the Institute. "For the last 5-6 years our organization has started to work hard on the civil education because we have found it extremely important for a society to encourage young people in discussions about the rule of law and the functioning of the Bulgarian judiciary. We have made a number of educational films for students of different grades. It is the first legal hackathon under the title Gamify the judiciary and it has an objective to create a model of a game that is related to the judiciary", explained Mrs. Gyaurova.

Prof. Dr. Tsvetana Stoyanova welcomed the participants by saying: "Our university was pleased to support the initiative of BIPI for organizing the first hackathon on legal topics in Bulgaria for students. I hope that the game you will develop today will help your peers to understand more easily the principle of the legal system. I am sure that I will see many of you in September because the UNWE and the Law Faculty could give you a lot. Believe in your abilities, pursue your dreams, know that they come true when you make some efforts".

"You have a difficult task in this game - to combine the law which has a thousand-year-old tradition with the modern technologies dating back since the 1970s as well as to say the most important thing about the judiciary. The guiding function of law in a society is to resolve its conflicts with the necessary justice, ethics and morality", addressed to the students also the Dean of the Law Faculty Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zahary Tormanov.

The participants in the hackathon were students from the National High School for Applied Arts “St. Luke“, 132 Secondary School "Vanya Voynova", Private High School “Prof. Nikolay Raynov”, 128 High School "Albert Einstein" and Second English Language High School "Thomas Jefferson" which were divided in 6 teams by the organizers.

During the second day of the hackathon each team presented its concept within 10 minutes. The jury composed of Prof. Dr. Zahary Tormanov /Dean of the UNWE Law Faculty/, the Director of BIPI Bilyana Gyaurova-Vegertseder, Dr. Zhenya Lazarova, psychologist and neuro-scientist, creator of the educational games and judge Vladimir Valkov, was delighted with the performance of the six teams.

The awards were bestowed by the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Bulgaria H. E. Simon van der Burg.