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Description
The project No means No will help contribute to a change of attitude among teens towards sexual assaults against girls through the approach of strategic communication based on personal stories. Two youth teams (2 х 20 young people) in the town of Kyustendil and the city of Varna will be trained to create films based on true stories: a youth TV series (Kyustendil) and 10 short films (Varna), disseminated via a specially created YouTube Channel, promoted widely in the social media and the mainstream media. The Kyustendil team will be supported by students from Krastyo Sarafov National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia and the Southwest University in Blagoevgrad and the team in Varna will be supported by experts from the Bulgarian National Television in Varna. the project plans to hold an arts academy for young people for creation of video materials and a strategic communication campaign (NO means NO), carried out with the help of an advertising agency, which will reach more than 500.000 citizens: parents, teachers, etc.; 150.000 adolescents below 18. The poster campaign in 100 schools in the country and online discussions with school students will prompt young people to fight against sexual violence in school. The young people will involve competent institutions in addressing the issue at a National Conference attended by representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science and Regional Education Inspectorates, NGOs and teachers. The project partnership will help reach the target audience in different regions across the country and directly involve young people from vulnerable groups (the Roma, youth with disabilities), who will present their opinion about the issue. The project addresses the issue through a bottom-up approach, a change of the attitudes of young people and involvement of the competent institutions.
Summary of project results
No means no, or how the children from Kyustendil created anemotional TV series and turned the stories about violence in school into a film.
With their innovative project, the "Debut" association - Kyustendil and the "My City" association - Varna want to change the point of view towards sexual assaults on girls between 14 and 18 years old at school. The project is called "No means no". The main goal of this project is to try to highlight issues that are related to sexual assault in school and all other places that teenagers are involved with. This project is innovative in that it is based on the awareness of the problem of sexual violence through the creation of two series.
In 2021, children from the town of Kyustendil, led by the director Lozen Yordanov and supported by the Active Citizens Fund, undertook the task to expose various aspects of sexual violence among adolescents. The films created aim to reveal the issue of sexual assaults of girls (aged 14 to 18) among teenagers as well as to lead to the making of policies for primary prevention of sexual violence at this age. The adolescents themselves discovered and gathered personal stories about sexual violence. The scripts of the created short films were based on the stories discovered.
The children from the city of Varna shared 10 stories and relied on the professional support of specialists from the Bulgarian National Television Two (BNT2). The participants in the project from the town of Kyustendil worked together with artists from the Municipal Theatre and created a film plot in 10 episodes. Before the adolescents started their creative process, they worked on topics related to creating a text, editing, screenwriting, types of montage, special effects, expressive elements of sound, specificity of cinematic expression and image. Their training also included hands-on drills for speech and breathing techniques in voicing the text, the selection of the background music, the sound recording and processing. The goal was to have every participant go individually through the stages of scriptwriting, filming with professional video equipment, cutting and voicing a film. The participants had a common interest in cinema and television and the way the latter visual arts have impact on people. You can learn more about the process of filming and the project on neznachine.org.
The 10 short films and the 10-episode film series have been watched more than 350,000 times on TikTok, 100,000 times on YouTube and more than 50,000 times on Facebook.
The national conference was held under the project on 5th August 2023 with the participation of the creative teams from Moyat Grad Association – Varna, Debute Association – Kyustendil, NGO representatives, school psychologists, school and university students. The young people noted that the completion of the project coincided with the time when the issue of violence had been in the public spotlight which proved that their two-year work to cast a light on the issue and highlight the topic matched the public interest.