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Description
In Bulgaria, environmental protection NGOs often confront shady businesses and political umbrellas over them. Such NGOs are some of the first that have been affected by the targeted attacks against the civil society. At the same time the environmental protection sector is one of the permanently consolidated sectors owing to For the Nature coalition. The coalition is one of its kind in Bulgaria and Europe, it is an informal network of more than 20 different NGOs and civil society groups voluntarily working together for more than 10 years. We believe that the Coalition plays an important role in overcoming the public stigma and that nothing is simply up to the individual and we want to raise the recognition of the Coalition with this project and recover and boost our capacity to support democracy and environmental protection in Bulgaria. The project has two man groups of activities: 1. overcoming the effects of the “black PR” with a positive proactive campaign of information activities aiming to recover the main “resource” for a strong civil society, namely public trust and support; 2. empowerment of local communities to develop environmentally friendly opportunities in their communities and deal with upcoming environmental protection issues. It is expected that information activities and outputs will reach more than 600.000 people in the social and mainstream media and more than 2000 people will be involved in direct conservation and information activities. The project will be implemented in partnership with two of the leading organizations in For the Nature Coalition (Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation and Green Balkans), which complement their expertise and regions of work. However, if the project is implemented, it will support all organizations from the Coalition as well as the environmental protection community in Bulgaria because the project aims at “bridging” the gap between citizens and state governance.