BULGARIA

Sdruzhenie Chastna profilirana gimnaziya po turizam i predpriemachestvo Rayko Tsonchev

Rayko Tsonchev Secondary School of Tourism and Entrepreneurship is established in 2007 and provides education in three specialties: tourism, entrepreneurship and information technologies in conjunction with dynamic learning of English language. The school has experience in several Erasmus projects. The training and learning processes are carried out in the premises of the school as well as in key business and public organizations. The students are prepared in the context of traditions and modern education methods and they are provided with a high level of practical knowledge and skills as well as excellent knowledge of foreign languages as a mandatory part of their education. The teaching staff numbers 23 and the students who are educated at the school are 66.

This is the ever growing problem with Earth's extinguishing resources. It is our duty to help young generations be fully responsible to our Planet and this is a way of practically involving it into their education.

Our experience in connection with the project includes a discipline called "Eco-tourism" where the students study environment friendly practices and involve themselves in such. Our teachers are industry professionals and have lots of connections with businesses involved in the sustainable tourism. An integral part of the subject "Eco-tourism" is the promotion of recycling, energy efficiency, water conservation and creation of economic opportunities for local communities. Apart from this, our school has ongoing activities aimed at recycling. One of them is a charity project fostering plastic cups collection and recycling, thus raising money for wheelchairs that are eventually given away to people with disabilities. A second project gives the opportunity to collect used paper in boxes distributed among the offices, and once a year deliver the collected paper to a recycling company. The campaigns encourage not only environment friendly attitude but also raise awareness about social issues that our future business people may have to solve. Also, the teachers and students have experience in an Erasmus project on topic "Ecotourism training concept" with the aim to raise awareness about the need of training units in environmental education and ecotourism.