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.
One of the main modules of the two-day training of young peer educators in Plovdiv was on puberty and growing up, during which for the first time was presented BFPA’s short film on puberty, made as a part of the project “The Challenges of Growing Up”, funded in the frame of Lidl Bulgaria’s “You and Lidl for a Better Life” initiative. After watching it, the young participants in the training who were from three Plovdiv and three Sofia schools, plus the young volunteers of Red Cross Youth in Plovdiv, Haskovo and Pazardjik shared their impressions and recommendations, as part of an open discussion and filling a prepared in advance questionnaire. Among the main recommendation was the film to also be shown to parents and to start showing with younger children around 5th grade. They see the video as a good starting point for an educational discussion and thus will be good for a start. The rest of the training modules included contraception, hygiene, STI and HIV prevention, family planning, communicational skills and team-building, and there were a lot of questions, comments and discussions. The BYRC volunteers who attended the training supported with up-to-date statistical data about hygiene, HIV statistics in Bulgaria, health messages and campaigns.
How to exit from our comfort zone and the coziness of the circle of people we are working with and know well; how to learn ourselves to patience; how to overcome obstacles that everyone of us is having, when listening someone... Paul Browde, psychiatrist, storyteller and couples’ guide, graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and Murray Nossel, clinical psychologist, Academy Award® nominated for documentary, founder and director of Narativ – both teaching narrative medicine in Columbian University – were facilitators of a listening and storytelling training for creating change, organized by the Bulgarian Family Planning and Sexual Health Association (BFPA). Health specialists and health mediators, psychologists, professionals working on the field with vulnerable communities (Roma, PLHIV, young people with learning disabilities and at risk etc.) from Blagoevgrad, Kazanlak, Lovech, Montana, Pleven, Pernik, Plovdiv, Ruse, Sliven, Sofia, and Sungurlare took part.
During the week from October 1st to October 5th Lina Fadl, a 15 year old schoolgirl from the Victor Hugo French Lycee in Sofia took her internship with us at BFPA’s Sofia office. In the photo Lina is with her back to the camera, since she doesn’t like to be photographed, but her Biology teacher, who visited us to see how things are happening, can be seen well. It was a great joy for our team to be reinforced by someone with a fresh outlook and thinking. As always in such cases, the benefits were mutual – Lina learned from us how is functioning of a non-government organization, how to elaborate project proposals, how to budget and report them, how to go on when your project proposal isn’t approved, why a Pap-smear is important, why besides HIV testing, counseling and support for people coming in for VCT is especially important, how and why to use educational playing cards, which other organizations are working in the field of education and healthcare, what socially responsible business means, and much more.
Sofia, August 30, 2018
Stara Zagora, August 24, 2018
Pleven, July 30 2018
Panagyurishte, July 13-15, 2018
Todor Chernev, 1945-2018
