Pazardzhik, Bulgaria students’ peer-to-peer climate education project; NetZeroCities video competition winner
Youth Leadership: Our Climate, Our Actions, Our Future
Youth Leadership: Our Climate, Our Actions, Our Future
How a peer-taught methodology took a Bulgarian classroom to Brussels and Turin
2026, Aleksandra Georgieva Stancheva, Kristian Aleksandrov Stanchev, Maya Lyubomirova Zafirova .
„Youth Leadership: Our Climate, Our Actions, Our Future“ is a student-led education initiative that connects peer-to-peer teaching, interdisciplinary STEM tasks and the EU’s GreenComp sustainability competences. The core idea is simple: instead of receiving climate knowledge passively, students research it, model it mathematically, build tools around it, and then teach it to their own peers.
The project began in a single classroom in Pazardzhik, Bulgaria, where a student, a group of teachers and a representative of a local NGO started asking how climate education could feel less abstract and more like something students actually own. It has since grown into a full methodology that has reached the European Commission in Brussels, the EU Cities Mission stage in Turin, and the Municipality of Pazardzhik’s own climate policy.
- From Passive Lessons to Peer-Led Teaching
At the heart of the project is the „ P eer-to- P eer E ducation“ method: students who have mastered a topic are trained to teach it to their classmates. This is not a gimmick — the team’s own analysis shows it strengthens knowledge transfer because it uses age-appropriate language, activates mutual support between students, and pushes the „student-teacher“ to reorganize what they know at a deeper cognitive level, directly building the social and leadership competences named in the European Reference Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning.
The method was first piloted in a 10th-grade class at the Specialized Mathematics High School „Konstantin Velichkov“ and has since been adapted for biology and mathematics classrooms in a this school and then for civic education in the Vocational High School of Agriculture „Tsaritsa Yoanna“.
- STEM Tools Built Around Real Climate Data
Rather than teaching climate topics in the abstract, the project turns them into interdisciplinary STEM case studies. In the sub-project „The Invisible Traces“, students from grades 7 and 10 surveyed their own school community, processed the results with statistical methods, and calculated an average carbon footprint of roughly 3 , 5 tonnes of CO₂ per student per year — a figure that became the baseline for 10 concrete recommendations at school, municipal and global level.
With the help of AI tools, the team built an online carbon-footprint calculator and a digital photosynthesis simulation, and an integrated mathematics worksheet combining exam-style statistics tasks with real data on electricity use, temperature and thermodynamic heat loss in classrooms — tasks that ask students not just to compute an answer, but to turn it into an operational recommendation for the school building.
The team also built and piloted a gamified learning tool, the educational game „Po-po-znay!“, part of a wider project that won a special award at the First Scientific-Practical Conference „Green Education for a Sustainable Future“ in Pazardzhik in November 2024.
- Classrooms – Peer-Taught Lessons
Two fully documented lessons illustrate the method in practice. In „Mathematics Is the Queen of All Sciences“, more experienced students mentored their classmates through a worksheet combining national-exam statistics preparation with environmental data analysis. On the eve of Europe Day, a second peer-led lesson introduced classmates to EU values, symbols and the GreenComp framework, culminating in students collectively assembling a European flag — explaining, star by star, the value each one represents, from solidarity to ecology.
- From Pazardzhik to Brussels and Turin
The project’s reach quickly moved beyond the classroom. In June 2025, the team presented their work in English to experts from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture in Brussels, including Trémeur Denigot, who introduced them to the GreenComp framework in person.
In 2026, team member Kristian Stanchev was invited to represent Pazardzhik as a panelist at European Youth Week in Brussels, speaking on „From Learning to Action: Empowering Young People to Shape Europe’s Green and Climate Neutrality Transition“. The presentation there led directly to producing a video project, which went on to win the international NetZeroCities video competition „My City, My Climate Action“. That win, in turn, brought an invitation to the Annual Conference of the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities in Turin (27–29 May 2026) — and thanks to this the Municipality of Pazardzhik was invited to join a NetZeroCities sub-mission, a negotiation that is still ongoing.
- Roots in the Local Community
The project deliberately does not stop at European stages. In partnership with the Vocational High School of Agriculture „Tsaritsa Yoanna“ and the national environmental cause „A Green Heart“, the team turned its data-driven recommendations into physical, local action: building a herb garden and planting Japanese cherry trees for a more sustainable urban microclimate — an event also attended by the Japanese Ambassador to Bulgaria. A working dialogue with Dr. Dragomir Tsanev of the Center for Energy Efficiency „EnEffect“ is now exploring concrete energy-efficiency measures for the city.
The project is also anchored in formal educational research. Impetus for this methodology also came from Kristian Stanchev’s own presentations at the Student Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at Sofia University, where he presented a research-based learning approach — students formulating their own question and seeking the answer through their own investigation, rather than receiving ready-made knowledge — for students at all levels. From that work, he went on to combine the peer-to-peer method with interdisciplinary STEM tasks and GreenComp, producing an innovative 5th-grade mathematics workbook, „Code 5: Math(s)!“, that embeds ecological case studies into the curriculum. In parallel, Maya Zafirova developed an original pedagogical methodology for teaching the „Biosphere“ unit through peer-to-peer education, with the results submitted as two articles to a scientific journal.
The team’s plans for the next stage include deepening cooperation with the Municipality of Pazardzhik on the NetZeroCities sub-mission, publishing the submitted research articles, developing new interdisciplinary STEM sub-projects, and expanding the peer-to-peer methodology to further schools and future European forums.
As the team puts it: “Our climate, our actions, our future – these are not just words. They are the choice we make every day” .
Aleksandra Georgieva Stancheva, Kristian Aleksandrov Stanchev, Maya Lyubomirova Zafirova
2.1 | Education for Climate priority
develop green skills and competences
SDG (07) Affordable and Clean Energy
SDG (11) Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG (15) Life On Land
SDG (17) Partnerships for the Goals
2.4 | GreenComp: sustainability competence focus
1.1 Valuing sustainability (Embodying Sustainability Values)
1.2 Supporting fairness (Embodying Sustainability Values)
1.3 Promoting nature (Embodying Sustainability Values)
2.1 Systems thinking (Embracing Complexity in Sustainability)
2.2 Critical thinking (Embracing Complexity in Sustainability)
2.3 Problem framing (Embracing Complexity in Sustainability)
3.1 Futures literacy (Envisioning Sustainable Futures)
3.2 Adaptability (Envisioning Sustainable Futures)
3.3 Exploratory thinking (Envisioning Sustainable Futures)
4.2 Collective action (Acting for Sustainability)
4.3 Individual initiative (Acting for Sustainability)
2.6 | related EU initiative
early childhood education and care
4.1 | community advisory group
4.2 | community peer review
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