Advocacy and Strategic Planning
The Bulgarian street protests of February and June 2013 demonstrated a budding energy among citizens for an increased role in the political process. Protests, however, are a spontaneous and short-term means of civic participation; a more effective and long-term way is through organised advocacy campaigns by NGOs and civil activists on concrete community problems.
This project aims to support participation via capacity-building for strategic planning and advocacy in NGOs in three Bulgarian cities where protesters in 2013 were especially active: Varna, Veliko Tarnovo and Blagoevgrad. Its outcome was a raised know-how and capability of NGOs to conduct advocacy campaigns and thus participate in a more organised and efficient manner in decision-making. Among its outputs were three advocacy campaigns on specific issues in each city and long-term patterns of cooperation between citizens and authorities. The project targeted NGOs, youth activists, local authorities and the media.
The project was financed within The Support of the Bulgarian NGO′s Programme through finance mechanism of the European Economic Area for the period of 2009 - 2014.
You can learn more about the program here.
The current project aims to contribute to more efficient citizen participation in this process and more broadly - to develop sustainable forms of dialogue between citizens and public officials.
The main goal of the project was to support IRIS’s institutional development and its capacity to participate, on the basis of its experience and expertise, in the formulation of new civic strategies for organisation, participation and raising accountability in decision-making – strategies reflecting the powerful and profound transformative processes in society that are in play over the last year or so.
Институтът за Регионални и Международни Изследвания (ИРМИ), със съдействието на Тръста за гражданско общество в централна и източна Европа, проведоха през 2009 г. проект на тема: „Тренинг и социализация на млади ромски активисти в позиции на политическо и гражданско лидерство в българската държава и общество“ с продължителност една година.
The project is aimed at improving the participation of civil society in Bulgaria in public policy formation through the ‛budget advocacy‛ approach.
The primary goal of the project was to strengthen democracy by facilitating effective representation of civil interests.
The aim of this project was to frame a perspective strategy for the policy development of the NGO sector in Bulgaria.