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Description
Over the last years environmental protection and the Green Laws Initiative of the Association for Research Practices have faced a refusal to enter into a dialogue with the institutions despite the proposals for improvements of the policies stemming from our regular monitoring of Rural Areas, Climate, Energy, Biodiversity, Spatial Development and Forests. Despite citizens’ great trust in environmental protection causes, failure to translate them into legislative initiatives has shown that it is necessary to have more attempts at entering into a dialogue between policy-makers and citizens, beyond confrontation in protests. That is why our project plans to focus not on monitoring but on preparing content in order to carry out efficient campaigns to attract citizens for active involvement as well as for live debates with members of political parties who can translate the dialogue with the citizens into real policies. Ten targeted campaigns on environmental protection issues will take place under the project, after the issues have been identified during meetings with citizens in 10 cities. The project will involve professional PR consultants, experts of the organization, 20 volunteers after the meetings with citizens, 5 new trainees of Green Laws and targeted number of 10.000 citizens involved in the activities, one of which is live debates with politicians. It is expected that at least 5 out of the 10 campaigns will lead to specific outcomes, i.e. amended/new legislative acts, solved cases, etc. depending on the topics of the campaigns that will be formulated in the meetings with citizens and regular contribution of the Green Laws experts. The long-term outcome we plan is more active involvement of citizens in a dialogue with politicians, improved understanding of the two groups of one another and real representativeness of political decisions about nature in Bulgaria.