Description
The project addresses the need to boost the limited advocacy capacity of environmental NGOs. The project aims at supporting green advocacy by boosting the capacity of both leading green NGOs in need of continuity of their efforts by young activists and small NGOs without any experience, working ad hoc on green cases. First, an advocacy guide for environment protection will be developed. Second, the database of protection areas www.ekoarhiv.bg will be expanded and new databases of other green NGOs, informal civil groups and young activists will be added to increase advocacy resources. A technical assistant will be hired to classify, digitalize and manage the expanded database. Third, 100 NGO members will be trained in using practical tools for green advocacy, monitoring of public policies on environment and campaigning. The project will benefit local communities, environmental NGOs, young activists and the media.
Summary of project results
The project addressed the need to boost the limited advocacy capacity of environmental NGOs. It created the following resources in order to develop and apply the skills for advocacy and impact on public policies: 1. Manual for green advocacy; 2. The database with documents on the online platform of the Association of Parks in Bulgaria, i.e. the Archive of Protected Areas,
www.ekoarhiv.bg, was expanded; 3. NGOs and young people were trained based on the manual and the archive in 4 district centres that were accessible to participants from across the country; 100 people were trained. As a result of the project new followers of the environmental movement were attracted and the expert capacity for work on environmental cases was expanded, both in the organizations from For the Nature Coalition and the new organizations based across the country. With the help of the manual and the 100 trained people the network of environmental activists expanded and some of the trained young people and representatives of NGOs took part actively in the last couple of months in environmental campaigns (the young people from Plovdiv have been particularly active). What was particularly important was the spread of expertise outside of Sofia City and establishing connection between the cities based on joint campaigns (e.g. the campaign for the management plans of the mountains of Pirin, Rila and Vitosha) as well as connection between the activists working together on environment cases (e.g. organization of rallies). The capacity for action of the environmental community outside Sofia City has increased and new volunteers can be attracted and can possibly work in the future as NGO experts. At present the trained volunteers join the campaigns of For the Nature Coalition.
Summary of bilateral results