Plovdiv, October 29-30, 2018
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.
Dr. Radosveta Stamenkova and Daniela Dikova from the BFPA team explained in detail to the young people how to convey SRH related messages in an understandable way to their public, how to select their sources of information, how to recognize fake news not only related to SRH, but in general, how one can get infected with STI and HIV and their effect on health in the long term, treatment and how to prevent them. The young trainers should pass this knowledge to their peers in schools and during out of school sessions in and around Plovdiv.
BFPA’s film about puberty was made under the "The Challenges of Growing Up" Project thanks to Lidl's "You and Lidl for a Better Life" initiative in partnership with Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation and the Bulgarian Donour's Forum. Made by BASIC - https://www.basic.team
