This year marks the 7th edition of the national project “Encouraging Friendship” organised by the BTC Company. This year, the project reached unprecedented dimensions since it has included 215 educational establishments and more than 13,765 children. In the scope of this year’s project, Friendship Day (“Dan prijateljstva”) has been organised for the first time, as well.

The project “Encouraging Friendship” invited all kindergarten and primary school children across the entire Slovenia to think about friendship and emphasised the significance of relationships. Educational establishments have taken part in the project in form of a tender, within which children expressed their views of friendships and friends.

The drawings, photographs, and other art works were exhibited in shopping centre BTC City Ljubljana as part of the final event. The final event took place on 19 April 2019 in theatre SiTi Teater in Ljubljana, where the best primary schools and kindergartens received recognitions for their art works. The exhibited works will be on display for all visitors of BTC City Ljubljana in Shopping Arena A until the end of May.

For the first time, this year’s project introduced also Friendship Day, with which we want to also include parents and families in the project and invite them to join us in our reflections of relationships. Friendship Day will take place at the end of April or start of May at primary school OŠ Zadobrova and kindergarten Vrtec Miškolin. At the workshop, two experts from the field of family therapy, Polona Greif and Domen Strmčnik, will present the parents with different ways of helping a child control their emotions and have healthy relationships. They will also discuss the skills children need to find good and honest friends and to be able to take care of themselves in relationships.

The Encouraging Friendship project is part of the wider programme The School of Co-existence that joins projects from different fields of sustainable development. With the inclusion in the programme as part of its business unit Mission: Green, the BTC Company actively contributes to a fairer society and higher quality of life of the younger as well as the older generations.