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.
BFPA’s Programme manager Ventzislav Kirkov, also a Chairman of the Bulgarian Platform for International Development (BPID), clarified the Platform’s priorities during the Bulgarian Presidency of the EC Council, their results and perspectives. Nedko Geshev, BFPA volunteer, and Ralitza Zgalevska, BFPA’s Program Coordinator, brainstormed the attendees for creating two youth focus groups for prevention of online violence against young people. Under the guidance of Pavlina Filipova the concept of Resource Mobilization was discussed, as well as new possibilities of project financing until the end of 2018 as well as a larger scale of BFPAs activities in the future.
The foreseen long term activities with an “added value” were expansion of services in BFPA’s branches by adding VCT for HIV and STIs with focus on syphilis and also mobilization of the volunteer base – resources, increasing 
its capacity, potential new partnerships for young people. The participants also attributed to the script of a short film on puberty. Work was done in three small thematic groups.
For the closing session Ivana Murdjeva and Milen Chavrov demonstrated interactively whether media address adequately topics related to all aspects of the HIV virus. Daniela Dikova, manager of BFPA’s Health centre, talked about the new modern contraceptive diaphragm and at the end Prof. Radka Argirova held an educational session about Hepatitis E – still not well known in the country.
Great mixture of motivated people from different age, professions, background and location. Great preparatory step for BFPA’s coming Annual General meeting.
