Students from Gabrovo support business sustainability through creative solutions

On 25.04.2024 RIC “Ambitious Gabrovo” organized a second CRE8® workshop with the participation of students from Technical University – Gabrovo and students from the Mathematical High School and the National Aprilov High School within the European project “Alliance of regional innovation ecosystems based on smart sustainable specialization strategies” (https://aries4.eu). The event is based on the Swedish CRE8® Workshop model developed by Karlstad University, Sweden. The idea is for businesses to increase their intelligence and sustainability by tapping into the creative potential of young people. Within 3 hours, the students divided into 4 teams at random, had to find a solution to a problem formulated by the company Sentestate Technologies, which develops innovative solutions for environmental monitoring. The company’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainability by increasing society’s knowledge of the environment through technology. The challenge presented to the young people was “How can we increase community engagement with air quality issues?”.

The solutions that the teams presented within 5 minutes through the pitching method were extremely interesting – from social platform and mobile apps to the use of influencers in TikTok. The four-member jury, including company representatives and project team members, had a very difficult time deciding on a winner as all teams had innovative ideas. What prevailed in the final evaluation was the team presentation and the answers to the questions asked by the jury. Team 1, consisting of Ivaylo Lamburov (Mathematical High School), Alexander Stefanov (Mathematical High School), Victoria Tsaneva (Mathematical High School) and Ventsislav Venkov (TU-Gabrovo) won the first place with their solution to create a social platform for healthy outdoor living, including a mobile app with the possibility to report air quality pollution and encourage the platform users through additional functionalities to actively participate in the process, identify problems and encourage relevant regional and national institutions to find solutions. An innovative strategy to promote the platform by deploying QR codes for direct reporting in public places was also presented. As the team says: “This is a platform by the people for the people. If we monitor air indicators, we will know where to walk, where to exercise, where to live, breathing cleaner air. If we take pictures of the pollution, organise campaigns and inform the responsible authorities, the whole community will live a greener life. The more active we are, the bigger our green footprint on the platform will be.”