“For Professionalism in Politics and For Encouraging Civil Participation”

Project contractor: ISI

Partners: "Open Society" Foundation, "Friedrich Ebert" Foundation - Bulgaria Bureau, "Nikolay Dobrev" Institute

Implementation period: December 2002 - November 2003

Source of funding: "Open Society" Foundation

The project started with a campaign to recruit participants for the training modules, following these requirements:

-            Two-thirds of the participants should be from municipalities smaller than the  regional centers (in accordance with the annual priorities of the Institute to work with small municipalities and towns);

-                           Age up to 41;

-                           Fluency in at least one foreign language.

As a result, up to June 15, 2003, training seminars were held in two groups with modules on "Political analyses and work with political information", "Public behavior", “Verbal and non-verbal communication", "Working with media" and "Organizational management". In July, the seventh workshop was held – the training module "Public campaigns", and in September - the eighth module "Civic Participation, Project Development and Management".

42 participants took part in the project, mostly from small municipalities of 14 regions - Blagoevgrad, Varna, Vratsa, Dobrich, Pazardzhik, Kyustendil, Pernik, Razgrad, Russe, Silistra, Sofia-city, Sofia-region, Tragovishte and Shumen.

Among the lecturers, trainers and coaches were nationwide renowned specialists such as Antoniy Todorov, Ani Marinova, Dobrin Kanev, Dobroslav Dobrev, Ivo Hristov, Lilyana Kaneva, Milena Yankova, Reneta Veneva, Tatiana Burudjieva, etc.

The workshops were held in different regions of the country in order to assist the participants. During the implementation, the team decided to further improve the project by developing an internship program for successful graduates of the training modules.

During the final seminar, the young politicians described their ideas and visions - how to train politicians; in teams developed four projects for activities in the field of civil society, and formed the idea for their future cooperation in a network. Also, all participants prepared written works on what they had learned and what had been useful for them in our training modules.

Objectives: The project aims to develop successful models for development and enhancing the role of the representative governance as a socially inclusive model. It is consistent with the annual highlights for overcoming social exclusion of people living in small towns and municipalities, and in underdeveloped regions of the country, as well as the vulnerability and the disintegration of various youth groups.

Based on this pilot project, at the end of the year, a new long-term project was launched: "Academy for Social Policy".