The Talent Bridges Programme is a part of the long term National Talent Programme, and it is scheduled to last from November 2012 till mid-2014. Its direct predecessor was the Hungarian Genius Programme that focussed on the establishment of a talent support network and on providing in-service training to talent support professionals. The programme resulted in the creation of a networks of Talent Points in Hungary and beyond her boarders in the Carpathian Basin, and it put in place a populous team of professionals with adequate qualification to detect, identify and develop talents.
The Talent Bridges Programme focusses on gifted/talented children and young persons in the public education. Its goal is to deepen the social integration of the talent support network; to trigger more active participation of the society; to convert talent support initiatives into practice. It stimulates the cooperation of the Talent Points; activates the network of professionals provided relevant in-service training and of the stakeholders of talent support in an effort to provide direct support to the talented youth and to advance their development. It defines as the centres of gravity the need to develop the potentials of the talented to the full, and to ensure the social utilisation of their results; to nurture the sense of social responsibility of the talented, and to “plough back” the energies of the mature, successful and dynamic talents into talent support. Besides, it contemplates a domestic communication campaign addressing the society in general and the groups contributing to talent support one by one to call their attention to the model examples, the best practices and the opportunities for action, and it launches a campaign within the European Union to raise awareness of the Hungarian model abroad and to strengthen the relationships between the domestic and the foreign talent support workshops and programmes.
The main tenet of the Programme is that talent support is a national cause, as expressed in the relevant parliamentary resolution: talent is a main driver and its expansion and utilisation fosters social and economic growth. That, in turn, makes it imperative to support the professional as well as the personality development of the talented youth, to make them capable of “enduring” their talent without suffering any psychological injury and of finding their place and ideal field of operation.
The Talent Bridges Programme is a priority project enjoying the support of the European Union, and is co-funded by the European Social Fund. The European Union and the Hungarian Government allocated a budget of almost HUF 2 billion. Its activities are organized in sub-projects:
Communication offensive (domestic and international)
