Teenovator is a national training programme for 16-17 years’ old young people, voluntary and free of charge. It was launched 5 years ago and this year there were over 500 participants from all over the country. Two mentors provide them entrepreneurial knowledge and experience in innovations for 9 months to help them build soft skills, prepare business plans, evaluate ideas, draft financial plans. They learn all that is necessary to start a business right away with minimum risk of failure. The first part of the training concludes with the so-called weekend of ideas. At the final competition the teams present their ideas to real investors – investment funds, large companies who evaluate them and provide financial awards. But the important thing is that even if they do not choose to be entrepreneurs, the acquired skills will make them good citizens.
The team of Christian Gyorov and Ognyan Yorgov got third award. When the last year’s winners presented the programme at the Sofia School of Mathematics, Christian decided that was what he was looking for and it would give him the necessary base. Ognyan is like-minded and together they came up with the idea for a software, which can analyse photos of agricultural fields based on artificial intelligence and computer vision with the help of drones or aircraft. The problem they targeted is the lack of adequate information about the health of the crops, what they need and whether they suffer from any diseases. In the work process they found out that in addition to ordinary photos they can use the infrared camera technology that provides visual information about where the problems areas are, and in this way save huge amounts of computing power.
They don’t know which is the more difficult task because a good analysis of the problem and a proper technology solution require different types of skills and efforts. They got feedback from agronomists, met with the chair of the Agricultural Union. It is expected that at the end of September or the beginning of October they will have a functional prototype.
Does then mentoring have a place in the Bulgarian education system?
Ivan Yosifov has been a mentor for years and believes that to be of critical importance because it provides the youth with structured knowledge, properly arranged. He says the relationship with the mentor is very valuable and enriches both sides because the mentor gets feedback from a young person who thinks differently. In Christian and Ognyan’s project the collected and accumulated information enables tracking the applied decisions. It is not just a one-time solution but an opportunity to get statistics and monitor.
The discussion was held and streamed online. Its recording can be watched at Facebook page of the campaign: