This is the 12th time that Croatian Telekom (Hrvatski Telekom) has organized a competition called "Stronger Together" (“Zajedno smo jači”) which awards the best projects in 3 categories: Youth education in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics); Education of teachers and professors in the STEM field; and Innovative solutions which have a positive impact on the community.

The fund for the award is EUR93,000 (HRK700,000) and the jury decided to give it to these projects: EUR26,600 (HRK200,000) to Scientific and Education Center Višnjan, for their project “HT Campus” which will organize a scientific-technological space for students to do research they can't do at school; EUR40,000 (HRK300,000) to Institute for youth development and innovation - IRIM, for the “Advanced Internet of Things technologies” (“Napredne internet of things tehnologije”) in Croatian schools. The project will include a donation of the necessary equipment and basic and advanced STEM mentor training in approximately 100 institutions. In the third category, EUR26,600 (HRK200,000) was awarded to the project “Prva hrvatska punionica vodika” (“The first Croatian hydrogen filling station”) by the Faculty of engineering and shipbuilding at the Zagreb University, which is based on a green technology that uses sun power to produce alternative fuels, in this case hydrogen.

“We are proud of our accomplishments, the most recent one being the success of students and mentors of Višnjan School of Astronomy this summer, when they discovered 10 asteroids in our Solar system, a discovery for which they got global recognition from the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union. I consider it an amazing discovery, which would have been difficult to achieve without the support and investments in the equipment. Hrvatski Telekom is a company that is in all of its strategic activities focused on the STEM field, which we have recognized as a key investment field for the future of the whole society. This is the second year in a row that we have directed funds from the Zajedno smo jači project into concrete projects that enable children to get familiar with science in a fun and practical way” - stated Nina Išek Međugorac, HT’s corporate communications director.

The company decided to strategically invest in early education of children in order to popularize STEM in Croatia, in the hopes of creating future experts in the up-and-coming fields of Internet of Things (IoT), machine to machine communication, Big data, Virtual reality (VR) and Artificial intelligence (AI).