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NNC Met with 20 Member Organizations to Conduct Legal Workshops and Focus Groups

Last week, the National Network for Children held legal workshops to support the organisations in the Network, as well as focus groups to explore social attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers in the country. It was extremely valuable for our team to meet so many people from the member organisations, local institutions and partners on the ground, to witness first-hand activities of their daily work, and also for the advocacy team of the NNC Secretariat to present tools to support organisations and citizens in the country.

We visited four cities – Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Ruse and Varna. The workshops and focus groups were attended by nearly 100 participants (representatives of civil society organizations and institutions, as well as refugee children and adults).

In Stara Zagora, Ruse and Varna we held legal workshops under the project “Legal Aid Network – Support to Organizations and Citizens”, implemented thanks to the Lachezar Tsotzorkov Foundation. The workshops were led by Georgi Elenkov, Director of Policies for Children at NNC. We presented our human rights work and gave an opportunity to the participating representatives of institutions and civil society organizations to discuss different cases from their work in the field related to child protection, combating antisocial behaviour, access to social services. We talked about our strategic cases and presented opportunities for free legal assistance to organizations and citizens. We were also able to discuss specific cases faced by organizations on the ground and relate them to systemic problems at the level of state institutions, legislation, administrative and judicial practice – the system of protection, the system of social services, access to justice for children, the failure of the regime of personal relations between separated parents and much more. The lack of specialised social services for children with deviant behaviour and antisocial behaviour, as well as for children with drug addictions and mental suffering, was highlighted as an accent in the discussions with organisations and institutions.

The second major task we accomplished with our trip to the country was to conduct focus groups to explore the different social attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers in our country. This activity was a joint initiative with the Department of Economic Sociology at the UNWE. We were able to survey students aged 11-19, refugees, representatives of institutions and civil society organisations about the real challenges faced by asylum seekers and their host communities in Bulgaria. The focus groups were moderated by Bella Damyanova (Coordinator “Policies for Children”), Diana Andreeva (Coordinator “Education”) and Georgi Elenkov from the NNC Secretariat. The transcripts of the focus group recordings are to be taken and the research is to be carried out. As soon as it is completed, we will share it on the NNC website and present it publicly together with our partners from the UNWE.

We believe that the meetings were valuable for everyone and we are looking forward to the next opportunity to visit more organizations and individuals who are (or are about to become) part of the National Network for Children throughout Bulgaria.

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