The Future of Education

Know and Can Association, Bulgaria is established in order to help children and young people to get involved into the field of informal education. To respond to youths’ needs for extra-curriculum activities that can reveal their intellectual potential and social skills, the Association decided to work out a program based on the intellectual games and mental activities. The program “Know and Can Clubs” provides different opportunities for young people to take part in extra educational process without considering it as something boring or compulsory.

The idea of working out the program “Know and Can Clubs” came because of the innumerable questions, mainly by young people, on:

- the lack of  places where to meet, communicate and share ideas with other young people having interests in intellectual sphere;
-needs to gain and reveal additional skills that traditional educational system cannot develop;
- how to spend their leisure time in interesting and useful way
-most of all–how to facilitate self-realization of young people who has already graduated high schools or universities and reduce the youth unemployment.

The program aims at teaching students at school age in active and self-dependent studying, encouraging them to take part in school life and activities and helping them to turn into creative and responsible people who are able to make decisions about their future self-realization responding to their needs and wills. The program is held in cooperation with high schools with the help of headmasters, pedagogical and career advisors, teachers and trainers. The program includes 30 class activities for students in secondary schools and 34 ones for the students in high-schools. The activities for students 10+ some of the activities are available in English too. To make it more creative and interesting, the Association organizes and carries out competitions among different schools as well as in schools themselves where students show their new skills and gained knowledge that helped them feeling confident and successful.

The aims of the non-formal intellectual games and mental activities are to help young people gain knowledge, social and communication skills and virtues in order to facilitate them to adapt to the higher and higher demands of social and educational spheres. This, consequently, will surely lead to their better adaptation and self-realization in real life as it develops young people’s mental and emotional intelligence.

In general, the program “Know and Can Clubs” aimed to increase students’ interests and motivation to the educational process by the out-school activities, to stimulate their personal capacity and virtues for successful choice of future self-realization, to form out in students active positions and attitude towards school itself and school life as a whole. We achieve the goals of the program because of our experience in informal education as well as our experience in dealing with youths and students at different school age.