ZAGREB, 28 July 2022 - Tourism and Sports Minister Nikolina Brnjac on Wednesday opened in Split a conference on the green and digital transformation of family and small hotels, organised by the National Association of Small and Family Hotels.

A new brand in family and small hotel management - eco green hotels - was presented at the event, the Tourism and Sports Ministry said in a statement.

Addressing the event, Brnjac said that small and family hotels have a very important role in moving away from mass-scale, seasonal tourism and reorienting oneself towards sustainability and greater quality, welcoming the initiative to introduce the new brand.

She noted that the importance of small and family hotels was also recognised in the new strategy for the development of sustainable tourism in the period until 2030 and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), and that efforts would be made to direct as much as possible of the HRK 2.2 billion (€293 million) intended for tourism, towards entrepreneurs.

A total of HRK 1.2 billion (€160 million) is intended for direct investments in the private sector, including HRK 720 million (€96 million) for hotels, to help them transform Croatia into a year-round destination.

Brnjac said that strategic activities would focus on the green and digital transition, social responsibility of tourism, education and accessible tourism for all.

For more, check out our politics section.

28 March 2022 - Young people are a pillar of social recovery and development of EU countries, which is why they should be invested in, it was said at a conference on education in Split on Monday.

"Recovery and development are not possible if one invests only in tourism and the services sector. It is necessary to also invest in young people and education," Croatian member of the European Parliament, Željana Zovko of the HDZ party, who organised the conference, said at the event.

"Young people are the ones to take Croatia and Europe towards technological progress. The key message of this conference is for young people to stay here and develop their talents," she said, calling for equal education opportunities both for those living in urban areas and those living in rural areas or on islands.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution in 2021 on the European education area, which says that the teaching profession is in a crisis because there are significant differences in education in the member-states in terms of working conditions, pay, assessment and professional requirements.

Teachers should be paid adequately for their work and students should be at the centre of the learning process, the document says, underlining the importance of learning foreign languages, notably English, as well as mass open online courses as a necessary element in promoting additional training and retraining.

Addressing the event via video link, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Mariya Gabriel said that the Recovery and Resilience Plan has the potential to become a lever for introducing a greener, more digital and more inclusive system of education in the EU.

Ina 2016, Split-Dalmatia County established a centre of excellence that currently has 430 children and 109 mentors in four basic programmes, and an additional 2,100 children in three extracurricular programmes with another 300 mentors, the centre's head, Ivica Zelić, said.

"We want to establish a system of support for talent development and make what we, in Split-Dalmatia County, are doing a national model," Zelić said.

In cooperation with Lika-Senj County,  the county plans to build a centre of excellence campus in Nova Sela in the hinterland of Omiš.

That campus will be the first of its kind in Southeast Europe and it will be a meeting place for excellent students not only from Croatia but from all over this part of Europe, said Split-Dalmatia County head Blaženko Boban.

As Slobodna Dalmacija/Sandra Barcot writes on the 5th of May, 2019, the world-renowned scientist Miroslav Radman is set to bring around a hundred scientists from across the world to Split. The international group of scientists will be part of the second International Progress in Biomedical Research conference.

From June the 17th to June the 21st, at Split's "Mediterranean Institute for Life Research" (MedILS), numerous respected experts from various areas of importance to human health will discuss, share experiences, and get better acquainted with the latest research on the extension of human life, the finding of remedies for the treatment of diseases that pose a serious threat to human life, and further educate themselves in general.

Split will play host to the leading scientists who will hold lectures on the molecular and cellular biology of diseases, with special emphasis placed on the fields of neuroscience, immunology, the metabolism, and diseases that is responsible for the misery, suffering and deaths of many in the modern day - cancer.

The participants of this year's conference in Split will focus on the concepts and challenges within each of these scientific areas through lectures on the latest technologies in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, cancer signaling, therapy development, DNA recovery and immunotherapy.

The conference is organised by the Mediterranean Institute for Life Research and the University of Toronto, more specifically by Professor Miroslav Radman (MedILS), Professor Mladen Merćep (MedILS) and Professor Igor Štagljar (University of Toronto).

The first conference of its sort, which was held in July last year in Split, also gathered together some one hundred scientists from the field of biomedical research dealing with the topic of understanding the function of the gene, the therapeutic importance of the gene, ie the gene for extending human life and the aging of human skin.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more. Is it just Split you're interested in? Give Total Split a follow.

Click here for the original article by Sandra Barcot for Slobodna Dalmacija