Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria
“…the people from “Fakulteta” and whichever other Roma neighborhood it may be, are not distinguished by their desires from everyone else – they want their home comfort and their dignity in life. And they achieve it somehow and in spite of everything – most of the young people and those of middle age are abroad because there are more job opportunities, because the pay is better, because they feel more valued there and last but not least because it is such conditions that create the ground for dreams.”
The strength and meaning of Civil Society Organizations’ /CSOs/ existence derives from people’s trust in their mission and it is important, especially in times of social and political crisis, that Non-Governmental Organizations /NGOs/ look critically at themselves and continue to uphold their core values and long-term goals.
The meeting of students and mentors for the academic year 2021/2022 became a spontaneous celebration of the beginning of life after the pandemic.
In the month of October, scholarship holders within the Scholarship Program for Roma students in medical degrees held a number of long-prepared initiatives in different parts of Bulgaria.
Bulgaria is in the final stages of adopting an official definition of energy poverty, but there is a risk that its use for the purpose of energy renovation of buildings will be done in a way that will not prioritize the energy poor and may even lead to an increase in energy inequality.
This desk research was conducted as part of the “I have a Dream” project of the Centre for Equality and Diversity in collaboration with the Bulgarian organization LARGO.
This project was designed to support emotionally, mentally and methodologically those who work with students on a daily basis. To give them a sense that what they do is valued, that they have the tools to cope with difficult situations, and that they can be supported in difficult times.
The main goal of this small, but very important project for local people, was to empower Roma health mediators in Pazardzhik district to conduct early screening of the Roma population for the prevention of socially significant diseases and allowing over 1000 people free access to these check-ups.
The project aims at improving the skills of the members of marginalized Roma communities in Sofia to exercise their rights. We plan to achieve our goal by developing and appraising an innovative programme titled Our Rights and Skills.
The project will be implemented in Fakulteta Neighbourhood in Sofia, the second largest Roma neighbourhood in Bulgaria. The project aims at developing further a programme for early childhood education and care and gathering empirical evidence of its immediate impact on child care, children‘s cognitive development and academic performance as well as parents’ values and social skills and other fields of parents’ social life, namely employment and civic involvement.
