site.btaCentre for Sustainable Communities Development Presents Partnership for Sustainable Refugee Inclusion Project

The Centre for Sustainable Communities Development (CSCD) in partnership with the Bulgarian School of Politics “Dimitry Panitza” presented the “Partnership for Sustainable Refugee Inclusion” project. The project, implemented jointly with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was presented at a news conference hosted by the BTA Press Club Tuesday.

The project was launched in 2022 and is expected to continue until September 2023. It began with the selection of 15 refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Syria and Kuwait. These eight women and seven men, the Refugee Advocacy and Inclusion Board,  underwent training in three modules  with 12 lecturers in March and May.

The main idea was to acquaint the Board with the legal framework and practices regarding refugees in Bulgaria, and orient them to which institutions to address respective problems. This was followed by effective communication in social networks, the political process in Bulgaria and political practices in the second module. The last module was related to psychological support for migrants. All training courses were held in English and Russian. 

Some of the refugees also took part in the news conference. To quote Tamara, who came from Ukraine, they said each one of them found something beneficial in the training and learnt what problems refugees from different countries shared or did not share. She explained that most of them are related to refugees and the project only helped the Board acquaint them with what they had learnt during the training modules. 

The project is implemented with the financial support provided by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway under the Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria within the EEA Financial Mechanism.