The project National Students Initiative “I Do Not Bribe!” was launched on 10 December, 2003. The team focused its efforts in 1) the development of the Anticorruption Education web site and 2) The preparation of two corruption-related web-based surveys.
The site was launched on 23 February, 2004 at http://www.VObg.net/.
A year after its launch the web site is already quite popular among its target audience: students, professors, journalists, state and civil organizations related to higher education. The registered daily number of visitors is 400, the weekly is 2,000, while monthly the site is visited by 8,000 people.
In March and April 2004 the project team developed two questionnaires for web-based surveys:
The general public survey conducted through the Anticorruption Education web site aimed to study public perceptions to corruption in higher education.
The specialized surveys were published on the web sites of New Bulgarian University, the Technical University of Gabrovo and Plovdiv University Paisii Hilendarski. They targeted solely the users of these particular web sites and aimed to survey whether the students/professors from these establishments think their university environment is corrupt and to what extent they are prepared to counter corruption practices. A total of 137 people took the three specialized surveys.
On 28 April, 2004 the findings of the general web survey and the three specialized ones were presented at a press conference at the Bulgarian News Agency.
On 18 May, 2004 a round-table discussion was held at the Technical University of Gabrovo.
On 20 May, 2004 a round-table discussion was held at the Plovdiv University Paisii Hilendarski. The discussion brought together students and professors from all institutes of higher education in Plovdiv.
The round-table participants stressed the apathy and indifference characteristic of a large number of university students. The Student Council chairman from the Agricultural University admitted that students rarely referred to the Council for any kind of assistance or problem solving.
On 26 October, 2004 the third round table was held with students and lecturers at the New Bulgarian University. The results from the university specialized survey were announced and the vice rector Mr. Lyudmil Georgiev gave a commentary speech on them.
On 1 December, 2004 the closing project press conference was held at which the week of no corruption at the three partner universities was announced. The project team gave an overview of what was done under the project and to what effects. During the no-corruption academic week the team distributed its publication, the Anticorruption Notebook at the three universities.
The Anticorruption Notebook was intended as a concise but comprehensive collection of all anti-corruption measures, corruption scandals and abuses of the system of higher education in Bulgaria in the last seven years. It is divided into two large sections, the first presenting findings from all previous university corruption surveys, and the second describing several notorious corruption scandals.
Source: Bulgarian Anticorruption Portal