Description
The project addresses the need to enable the civil society to take part in open public debates and create the appropriate infrastructure. The project aims at setting up a network of organizations launching public debates, helping their members boost their capacity and strengthening their organization as well as providing the necessary infrastructure for open debate centres. First, a kickoff meeting will be held with the 7 partners to share experience and discuss the themes, approaches and formats of debates. Second, each partner will organize 4 public events across the country. Third, the partners will receive support for the planning and organization of events. Fourth, a large-scale awareness campaign will be carried out to promote the network for debates. Finally, all events will be audio and video recorded. The project will benefit the partner organizations, building their capacity, as well as local communities. The partners will help organize local debates.
Summary of project results
The project answered a need for a type of public space open for civic, non-expert debates and discussions on themes of key interest. Such debates serve as a kind of “laboratories of civic participation”. Such opportunities in Bulgaria are few and as a rule, they are concentrated almost exclusively in the capital Sofia. This leaves citizens with a feeling of being too far away from where politics is done and where decisions are taken and thus, weakens their willingness to participate in public life, and in the end leads them to radical demands for an overall change of the existing system. To answer these needs a Bulgarian Network of Civic Dialogue was established in order to empower and nurture civil society actors. Each of the 7 partner organizations realized 4 debates in their communities, which made 28 debates organized within the project as a whole. The debate programme was especially active and intensive during the period November 2014 – January 2015. The events organized in the frame of the programme managed to attract wide citizen participation and contributed to public discussion of key issues for the seven local communities. In the frame of the project the partner organizations received bigger visibility and affirmed their identity as places of open and meaningful civic dialogue. The project also supported the organizational strengthening and exchange of experience between these organizations. It helped to increase the capacity of cultural organizations to serve as places for enlightened, argumentative and agile debate, open to different actors of the civic society. The project was highly appreciated by the participating organizations. All partners are determined to continue with organizing new debates within the network as well as independently. The network plans to prepare a second phase of the project, trying to widen its scope and bring more partners in it.
Summary of bilateral results