Our Learning Action Partnership – flexible and organic
Sofia, August 30, 2018
Representatives of the National Network for Children, Bulgarian Family Planning and Sexual Health Association, Applied Research and Communication Foundation, MoH, PULSE Foundation, MSLP, National Network of Health Mediators, Tulip Foundation, UNICEF, Institute for Social Activities and Practices and the initiative Brave Bakery participated in the next meeting of Learning Action Partnership (LAP). Summary of the activities done from the last meeting from LAP members and the work in process on topics of the working group was presented. The participants were informed on the conducted by BFPA and PULSE and ARC Foundations focus groups with young people on the second monitoring ring of Lanzarote Committee „Protection of children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, committed trough informational and communicational technologies“. The cooperation with Canadian and other leading world universities working on the topics of sexual exploitation, violence and abuse of children and adolescents was also discussed.
-Is it legal to make a photo session with semi naked pictures of children and adolescents under 18 without parental consent? If not legal, is it really prosecuted? -To what extend and in what way a semi-naked photograph is considered to be pornography? These were just part of the questions asked by young people who participated in a consultative group on protection of children from sexual exploitation and sexual violence that took place on August 24, 2018 in Stara Zagora. The working focus with young people from the two language schools, the mathematic and the commerce high schools in the town was mainly around informational and communication technologies. We talked about the rights of the child and about the potential dangers and the required responsible behavior in social media and internet.
Focus group on topics, connected with safety and protection of children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online conducted a team of the Bulgarian Family Planning and Sexual Health Association (BFPA) in Pleven on July 30, 2018. Special focus when working was put on informational and communication technologies. The work with children is an addition to answers of the countries of Council of Europe according to the Convention of Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, which requires criminalizing of every kind of sexual crime against children. It shows that the countries in and out of Europe have to adopt concrete legislation trough measures for preventing the sexual violence, protecting children-victims, as well to implement criminal prosecution of perpetrations.
„Not everybody had the chance to get good education, we have to do our best to understand everyone,” – says one of the participants, thinking on the question if she knows whether there are some punishments for children who share pictures with provocative content in the network”.
BFPA Annual Retreat Meeting 2018 – The New coming 25
Panagyurishte, July 13-15, 2018
Besides the pleasure of meeting, discussing and having fun together with our branch managers, some of our most prominent and active volunteers, representatives of BFPA’s Board and key partners of the Association, at the 2018 Annual retreat meeting we put the start of a lot of activities for the present and upcoming programmatic period and also shared outcomes of successfully implemented and finalized activities. We called the meeting “The New coming 25” – it is the first year after our 25th anniversary. BFPA’s Executive Director Dr. Radosveta Stamenkova reported the activities for 2018 until now and outlined the forthcoming ones, the perspectives from the viewpoint of the volunteers, the Board and partners were discussed, we tried to foresee the challenges in connection with our future activities in 2018-2019 and their eventual success, which usually brings on more work, and we still find it is good news.
For the Management board, staff, volunteers and supporters of the Bulgarian Family Planning and Sexual Health Association (BFPA) it is a great sadness to share that the first (and only so far) Honorary President of BFPA Professor Todor Chernev passed away on June 4 2018 the age of 72. He was one of the most outstanding gynecologists in the country, with many awards and achievements, including the national “Golden Hands” award. Besides all his different duties and important causes he was supporting, the Professor , as we called him was one of the founders of BFPA and was President of its Management Board for more than a decade. Professor Chernev remained a reproductive health consultant of our clinic in Sofia for almost 25 years and was active in the work for providing access to health services for underserved and vulnerable groups. He will be missed a lot by his wife, two sons, granddaughter, relatives and friends. The short video below reflects just part of his initiatives and successes. RIP! You will be remembered.
Meeting of the teams on the project ‘My Body, My Rights’, supported by the prohgamme for socially responsible business “MSD for Mothers” took place in Dolna Banya on September 2-4, 2020. Special guests during the event were the Executive Director of ‘St. Sofia’ First OB Hospital Dr. Gergana Kolarova and the coordinator of BFPA in Pleven Dr. Krasimir Romanov. The priceless opportunity to have a direct dialog with Dr. Kolarova was highly appreciated by the team in Sofia and gave them the possibility to adjust the field efforts and optimize the collaboration with the hospital in the field of family planning. Topics of the discussions during the three-day meeting were: what examinations to be done during the pregnancy and what is doing the gynecologist in the different stages; what are the benefits from health insurances; how much does it cost and how to recover health insurance rights; the benefits of visualization for understanding the information. Short educational films, developed to help the work at local level, were presented. The work during the three days with health mediators and other colleagues working on the field from Montana, Sofia and Yambol included discussing the progress currently made and future activities trill the project end. In the crisis months from the beginning of the year two tenth graders from Yambol were close to drop out from school due to the death of their parents, but the project team supported them and the boys will finish their secondary education. Two of the girls, trained on the project this year will be studying pedagogy in Veliko Tarnovo University.
“I’m a 15-year old boy, in the ninth grade. Recently I met a girl in the social networks. After chatting a few days in Skype, we turned on cameras, send saucy pictures…. Now it transpires the girl is not a girl at all, I was recorded and being blackmailed, for money, for more pictures, otherwise the recordings will be made widely public. What do I do to get out of this situation?” Another case: “I’m in the sixth grade. A classmate who is a Facebook friend of our history teacher downloaded her picture and made her a professional profile in a porn site. What do I do, how do I react?” The two cases are just a small part of the one-day training on the Cyber Scout programme for internet safety and online security for the members of the Learning action partnership (LAP). We talked about online bullying, online sexual exploitation, about the ways we should react, what rules apply, what is allowed and effective… We review different cases – from a threat from a pedophile regarding the security of a child to an innocent at first exchange between friends which escalates to online harassment that can have serious and long-term consequences for the victim’s life and mentality.
For three days – from August 20 to 22, 2020 BFPA’s team and Board together with representatives of key partners of the Association gathered at a outside-the-box work meeting in Dolna Banya. The public relations and civic law spepcialists Diana Damyanova and Ivana Murdjeva shared with the participants important accents of their professional expertise which are significant for better understanding the public environment as well as for communicating our messages. The goal of the event was to analyze the needs of our target groups and of the environment we work in, bearing in mind the challenges for the NGO sector and the specificities in communicating with different audiences in order to be more successful when working in ”our” niche – health prevention, family planning, sexual and reproductive health. A short historical overview of the legislative environment and key normative documents was made.
Sofia, August 30, 2018
Stara Zagora, August 24, 2018
Pleven, July 30 2018
Panagyurishte, July 13-15, 2018
Todor Chernev, 1945-2018
