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A different Safer Internet Day designed by the young people
 An exhibition of hundreds of small kids’ drawings, inspiring presentations of young people streamed live online and musical event ended by a heavy metal band of pupils of 4 different schools. It does not seem like a typical Safer Internet Day celebration but that is how it was on 11th February at the premises of the EC and Europarliament representation office in Sofia. Because the scenario was developed by the young people themselves for their 80 peers attending the event.
 The day started with the three mobile operators sending for a 4th year in a row millions of SMSs to their customers reminding them of SID. At the same time the team of the Safer Internet Centre was frantically trying to prepare an exhibition of more than a thousand drawings received from dozens of primary schools from around the country. It was not a competition, there were no prizes and still a small army of kids with their generals-teachers enthusiastically wrote and draw endings to a fairy tale about “You are the hero (in internet)”.
The national event started rather late in the day – from 3pm in order to have a musical party at the end. As the young people put it, “what a celebration is that without music”.
The head of the EC representation office Mr. Ognian Zlatev, the chair of the State Agency for Child Protection Mrs. Eva Jecheva and a representative of the Commission on children, youth and sports at the national Parliament kept really short their addresses as kindly asked by SIC The teacher Rositsa Visarionova from Haskovo, winner of the annual pre-SID competition “Teacher leader in virtual space”, and her two pupils Antoan Kalev and Tsvetelina Tencheva described how they worked in the class on the theme “The young people between the virtual and the real”.
Then, the first presenter was not so young because Mr. Dimitar Ganchev from Internet Society-Bulgaria is one of the pioneers of internet in the country from the times when the WWW was not yet even imagined. He recalled that exciting era to the amazed young people who knew that there were times without internet but they would guess that no witnesses are still alive :-)
 Then it was the turn of two bright girls from the city of Dupnitsa –delegates to the previous year’s SID2013 - TeeNet Parliament. Borislava Dineva reminded how the Charter for online rights and responsibilities of the young people in Bulgaria was prepared, discussed and voted. It provoked a discussion about how to further promote the Charter so that all young people and the responsible institutions in the country become aware of it. Lilyana Slavova described how the internet helped her to become a delegate to the TeeNet parliament and then to participate in the Safer Internet Forum in Brussels, to make friends from around the globe and to create pieces of fine art.
The last presenter - Lyubomir Yanchev, programmer from the age of 7, 18-year old entrepreneur and inventor of a smart home cheap system and of the ultimate remote control for all kind of appliances inspired the audience with his message the what the world needs today is young people willing to change it!
 And then, finally, the musical show was started by Good Music Society band whose leader Mihail Stefanov is representative of the A21 Campaign against trafficking of women and girls. Singer Natali Nikolova and the Tune UP band followed. At the end the EC and EP representation office building was shaken by the metal rock sound of Maverick.
What a Safer Internet Day!
Drawings from the exhibition
In a supporting awareness campaign the mobile operator GLOBUL developed a rather scary video
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