Project: “Model for Early Education, Care and Active Participation – I CAN”

Project status: in implementation

Implemented in: Sofia (Fakulteta)

Program: Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria

Implementation period: 30.07.2021 – 29.04.2024

Project Promoter: Health and Social Development Foundation

Partners: no

Summary:
The members of the Roma community cannot exercise fully their education, health and employment rights due to systemic, structural and practical barriers. Successful boosting of parenting capacity considerably improves parents’ efficiency and self-confidence and empowers them for equal participation in mainstream services. I CAN is an innovation, which applies an integrated approach to meet the community needs, provides strong arguments in favour of empowerment of vulnerable communities and improves access to services; offers useful pragmatic solutions for public policies for the development of human resources in the country; reinforces the role of the civil sector in offering flexible and efficient evidence-based programmes to address the community needs.
The project will be implemented in Faculteta 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. I CAN has an advisory body, Council of Mothers, which safeguards principles of cultural tolerance and continuity of programme implementation. 168 parents and at least 84 children aged 0-5 will benefit from I CAN. 20 mothers having a prominent place in the community will attend a leadership programme for support of early childhood development in the Roma community. The project plans to hold offline and online campaigns targeted at parents, employers, social and health service providers and professional organizations, institutions and municipal administrations.
The added value of the project is its contribution to boosting the capacity of our team to provide quality services supporting early childhood development. We are looking for mechanisms at present via the new Social Services Act to ensure the sustainability of high impact services with funds from the national budget. I CAN has a strategic nature because it provides a mechanism for assessment of the efficiency of services, proof of their impact and strong arguments in favour of empowerment of the community to implement policies.

Grant amount: 134 370 EUR

Contact: Elena Kabakchieva
email: e.kabakchieva@hesed.bg
phone: +359 885090938
address: Sofia 1309, Tsaribrodska 70 str. office 4
www.hesed.bg

Brochure about the project (in Bulgarian)

Watch what parents share about their participation in the project. NOTE: Videos are in Bulgarian.

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