Students and their parents from more than 10 schools from Sofia participated in the IT students’ competition “Big to Me”, which was organized for the 9th year in a row by the Sofia Development Association, Sofia Municipality and the Lauder-ORT School.

This year’s theme was “Creating Positive Messages to Counter Online Hate Speech.” As a result our Coalition grew by a hundred new people.  

The student-parent teams from 5^th grade had to create a colorful postcard that promoted tolerance. One of the participants said that the task made them think whether they are tolerant enough in their everyday lives or not.

The 6^th grade teams had to solve a 20 question quiz on the topic of multiculturalism, celebrities who are also migrants and refugees, and so on. They also had to create posters on the topic of tolerance and Sofia as a multicultural city.  One of the students said that this competition proved that a person can learn a lot of interesting stuff while having a lot of fun.

The 7^th grade teams had the task of creating interactive presentations that had to answer the question “What is hate speech and how can we counter it?”

“It wasn’t an easy task, but it made me think a lot about how we communicate online.” said one of the participants.