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Description
More than 17,500 people from the villages of Haskovo Municipality have limited access to health and social services and cultural events because they cannot afford to cover the travelling costs to the cities to receive such services. The only opportunity for these people to take part in local decision-making is by voting in the elections. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic the local villagers ended up being dependent on the decisions of local authorities without the opportunity to mobilise themselves and take steps to meet their own needs. Most of them do not have the knowledge and skills to look for national or European financing and there is no available funding at local level. The project aims at overcoming this inequality by active involvement of citizens in solving issues and by implementing initiatives at local level. We envisage to draft a Programme for Participatory Budgeting as a universal tool that can quickly and adequately meet the specific needs of the villagers. We plan to provide training to at least 45 members of the target group (the citizens of Haskovo Municipality and in particular the villages of Voivodovo, Stamboliyski and Malevo) to help them acquire knowledge and skills about advocacy lobbying, recruiting volunteers, planning and implementation of initiatives and computer literacy. The direct users of the project results will be 3229 people from the three villages and gradually the citizens of the whole Haskovo Municipality.