We address apathy to politics and governance. We unlock the potential of youngsters, we empower them with civic competences, we motivate them to get involved in strengthening participatory democracy. We add value to a national priority, which amends 2020 secondary schools’ curriculum with civic education, and to Europe-wide demands for more coherent knowledge and skills of young Europeans, so that they are enabled to perform jointly as active and responsible European citizens.

Cities in North Bulgaria: Ruse, Razgrad, Silistra, Targovishte, V. Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Lovetch, Pleven

Civic education in Bulgaria has been neglected for years. In communism democracy was neither studied, nor practiced, citizens were supposed to be aware of Marxism-Leninism and history of communist party. They were not expected to be active, they had to be re-active in terms of conforming with the decisions of the party “elite”. Civic ignorance was put on hold in post-communism. Strengths of participatory democracy were not allowed to manifest themselves. Majority of citizens believe Bulgarian democracy is a façade. This has led to political apathy and a common claim, that nothing depends on citizens. One of the main culprits for this situation is the deficit of competences. A window of opportunity to overcome the problem is the 2020 introduction of Civic Education in secondary schools.

Our main target groups are students of 11th and 12th grades from small cities in North Bulgaria. These people are at the doorstep of finding their identity and choosing their work path as citizens. For this target group, concepts such as Civil society, Globalization, Stigmatization, Climate changes, European Union and many more are still at best vaguely known, since such knowledge is taught only in universities. There aren’t any pedagogues in Bulgaria with civic education teaching background, so history, geography and philosophy teachers have to be further trained instead, making them our second target group. They will have the opportunity to get acquainted with our project’s teaching methods and materials which will be made available online on our project’s web platform.

1.Translate, update, edit and digitize the Political Lexicon
2.Organize a work meeting to discuss the Lexicon’s contents and further revision steps with its authors
3.Create a web platform for the Lexicon; promote the web platform via info campaign
4.Prepare 4 lessons for 11th grade students in collaboration with Ruse Youth Parliament, professors from Uni Ruse and local teachers; present them in local high schools
5.Prepare 4 lessons for 12th grade students in Aug. and Sept. 2021; present them in local high schools
6.Organize in Oct. and Nov. 2021 visits and seminars with teachers and school directors from the 8 cities; present 2 lessons at each meeting
7.Form a local civic education network – a forum to discuss and facilitate civic engagement

Since there aren't enough trained teachers in the subject Civic Education, and the current teaching staff consists of teachers from various other specialties and age groups, we strive to sensitize a target group of ~300 teachers from 8 small towns and provide 8 complete teaching and video materials
Our project covers a region of over 1 million citizens, over 4000 students from 11th and 12th grade and other stakeholders (the Lexicon contains over 2500 terms).
Sample topics:
Civil society as corrective; Minorities’ identity and civil rights; Misinformation; Dignity, human rights and justice; Subsidiarity and Europe for citizens; Structure, functions, dialogicity between the main institutions of the Republic of Bulgaria and the EU; Nature and culture in the conditions of globalization

We intervene in 2020 Civic education classes to help teachers and equip youngsters with competences on democracy and active citizenship, i.e. affiliation of the individual and the group to a political community, rights and obligations assigned to them by political institutions, public relationships via which citizens can try to clarify and solve common affairs. We prepare teaching and learning materials for 8 Civic education topics, which will include case studies on public issues at local and community level. We translate the “Political Lexicon” of Prof. K.Schubert and M. Klein (University of Münster) in BG and use it as teaching material for the needs of 11th and 12th grade secondary education curriculum,
thus enhancing the content with more points of view on meanings of concepts.

Our NGO has years long invested interest in nurturing the civil society and citizen’s civic-awareness in both our city and state - working with the minorities’ problematic (Roma and Jewish oriented projects). We believe that the affirmation of moral values for human dignity, solidarity, eco-compliance, and equal treatment are amongst the best working tools against misinformation and the abuse of political rights, issues common in an European context, the betterment of which no doubt will lessen the moral crisis. Further examples of our engagement are the projects: “BG as a second language for non-native speakers” “Emergence of civic society in Ruse” in cooperation with the State Archives, and a movie called “Six women” that traces the beginnings of ecological movements in Bulgaria.

Translation fees: 11000 EUR
Editing and correcting work: 5000 EUR
6 Meetings with Youth Parliament: 1200
Web Platform (development, hosting, maintenance) and indexes: 3000 EUR
Project meeting with the authors: 1200
Website maintenance: 1200 EUR
Updating of Lexicon's contents: 700 EUR
Preparation of 8 lessons: 9600 EUR
7 business trips: 1750 EUR
Lecturer’s fees: 1600 EUR
8 Caterings + hall rental: 8000 EUR
Project management and administration: 3500 EUR
Accountancy: 2100 EUR

We would greatly appreciate any advice and opinions on how to further improve on our idea. What seems feasible and what doesn’t? We would also appreciate any advises from experienced members of the Community, who have been dealing with problematic close to the one represented in our project idea.