Anthony Hasiotis, CEO of Postbank, bestowed the awards to 44 students, winners in High Start with Postbank program. The students received diplomas and checks worth 500 BGN in the presence of Postbank's top management, Kircho Atanasov, Deputy Minister of Education, Vanya Kastreva, Head of the Inspectorate on Education in Sofia, directors, teachers and parents.
"As a CEO of Postbank and as a father, I am particularly proud that we were the first financial institution to invest funds and energy in secondary education in Bulgaria and I am happy that this program has evolved into a good tradition. This is not just something we do locally - supporting education is a main priority in the corporate social responsibility strategy of our parent Eurobank EFG Group.", said Mr. Hasiotis in his welcome speech.
Minister Atanasov expressed his gratitude to Postbank and particularly to Mr.Hassiotis for the progressive initiative of the financial institution. "The High Start with Postbank programme has been well ahead of the recent trends in Bulgaria as well as in the EU. As you already know, the EU defined 8 key competences of the European citizen, and the second of these skills is precisely knowledge of foreign languages. Lately, public-private partnership in the sphere of education is quite frequently mentioned and it has already been happening in Postbank for four years now."
The total prize fund of the 2008 High Start program is BGL 54 000 This year, the financial institution will reward 108 students from 17 Bulgarian cities. After the ceremony in Sofia, Postbank's awarding ceremonies will be also held in Plovdiv, Varna and Montana.
Each year, the High Start with Postbank program is carried out under the auspices of the Minister of Education and Science and with the support of the Ministry. The ranking of students is based on the scores on the centralized external foreign language examination for 8th grade students from the specialized foreign language schools, organized by the Ministry of Education.
So far, under the program Postbank has rewarded more than 500 students with a total amount of 221 000 BGN.
