The EPS Yerevan Young Minds Section was established in 2018 and since then has faced many problems associated with the popularization of science. However, members of Yerevan YM are determined to break stereotypes surrounding science, spread awareness of its various applications and simply show its beauty. To do so, we have organized various outreach and professional development activities.

As in many other countries, the Armenian school system was not adapted to transition to distant learning and online lessons. Many schoolchildren did not even have any electronic devices or stable WIFI connection for joining the online lessons. For some of them learning physical equations by heart and answering teachers’ questions without a blackboard did not bring any joy, so some did not participate in the distant learning process at all. They simply could not understand why they would have to do that.

To help remedy the situation and decide what our next steps should be, we transitioned our discussions to online platforms and started online meetings. To keep up with Yerevan Young Mind's goal to make studying physics fun and increase schoolchildren’s engagement, we decided to create a YouTube channel, start a short video series to supplement the online learning process and share them. Shortly after the start of the project, we got overwhelmingly positive feedback not only from schoolkids but also from their parents. Some children even started repeating the experiments at home, recorded and sent their attempts to us, which is a big encouragement for our section.

Furthermore, utilizing the advantages of online platforms, we have established connections with leading researchers from top universities all around the world. Soon after exams, we will start additional online series with seminars with professors working in NASA, MIT, Max Planck Institute and other universities. We believe that this will also help us tremendously in our professional development endeavours and will help us foster new research collaborations.