Bulgarian group report

Here you can read a short group report from the Bulgarian group. It’s been made before they came to Texel and just after they finished their first CU in 10 Years steps.

Bulgarian group report.

In the beginning of the project there was an information meeting, organized by the national group. We presented the project “CU in 10 years”. After that we invited all those youngsters who had interest to take part in the project. Those were young and active people who didn’t know each other before. We had a meeting for detailed introducing the project objectives and we divided our personal duties. Some of us were working on the street surveys; others were responsible for preparing the discussions with the local decision makers. Two girls made the street surveys and six more took part in the interviews.

Invitation letters were sent to representatives of the local authorities. They were asked to arrange dates and suitable time for the meetings with us. We didn’t receive an answer to most letters, probably because of the politicians’ duties and lack of free time for the local elections. But there were some who were ready and open to discuss with us the project topics.

We also organized a meeting for promotion of the project and the aim: to create a youth council. The meeting was held with students from the local youth parliament in Dimitrovgrad and volunteers from their local youth centre. We first presented the main activities of Haskovo youth centre and the opportunities for leisure time activities that are provided in Haskovo. Then we talked more about the project ideas and aims. The youngsters were very interested in the activities and we received support by them in sharing experience. We had meetings with youngsters from other smaller towns in Haskovo region. Our leader organized meetings with members from the Regional Youth Councils in Stara Zagora and Plovdiv. Lots of experience was shared between our group and those who have had more knowledge in the filed of youth policy development.

During the first stage of preparation a local journalist and a local expert of social science were consulting and helping the group to prepare the questions and themes for discussions with the politicians. We received a lot of useful information about the local strategy for youth development, about the structure of some institutions in the field of youth work and some legal regulations regarding the establishment of NGOs and a youth council. They also help us to develop materials that we used during our surveys and interviews.

We used Dictaphones and a video camera when interviewing the people. We all worked together for collecting all information, translation and preparing the subtitles, cutting and editing the final materials. An EVS volunteer – Koert from the Netherlands was filming all materials.

We took part in an information meeting about the project CU in 10 years and also learned a lot about other opportunities for young people in other countries like: participating in youth exchanges, EVS in Europe, youth initiatives and training courses… A lot of local young people, teachers and others from the community came and took part.

Now we are looking forward to meet the other groups from Denmark, Holland, Italy and Estonia..

IT WAS FUN TO DO EVERYTHING TOGETHER!!!!!