Macedonian students win US State Department award

21/07/2006

Four Macedonian students were honoured for a website dedicated to the issue of child poverty.

By Marina Stojanovska for Southeast European Times in Skopje -- 21/07/06

The students' site focuses on child poverty and the ways in which international relations can address the problems that contribute to it. [fightpoverty.mmbrico.com]

Four students from the Metodija Mitevski Brico Primary School in Delcevo, Macedonia, were co-winners of a prize conferred by the US Department of State for websites that teach about the importance of international affairs and diplomacy.

Ana Gjorgievska, Elena Gjorgievska, Zoran Dimitrovski and Zikica Popovski, the designers of the site, will be granted $2,000 each, and their teacher Roza Stamenkovska and the school will receive $500 each.

The students were Platinum Prize winners in the 2006 Doors to Diplomacy contest. Their site, fightpoverty.mmbrico.com, focuses on child poverty and ways in which international relations can address the problems that contribute to it.

"Our school is involved in several projects and one of them is the project for connecting schools via the internet through which we learned about the Web-diplomats competition," Stamenkovska said. "Last year we worked within a project, All Together -- United World where we won a letter of praise. This year, we applied again and made a project treating a less global topic, poverty, with special emphasis to children poverty."

"The website has multifold goals: elevating the awareness with older populations, decreasing poverty through presentation of the consequences and uniting all young people in creating a joint resolution that will be delivered to any government in the world," Stamenkovska said.

Upon the news of the award, the students and Stamenkovska were received by President Branko Crvenkovski and Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski.

A total of 305 teams of students-- ages 15 to 18 -- from 46 countries took part in the competition, sponsored by the Global SchoolNet Foundation and the US State Department. Along with the Delcevo students, students of the Florida Virtual School in Orlando, Florida, also won the Platinum Prize for their website "Golden Bridges: Connecting People to Peace".