The first meeting was held on 11.03.2017 under the project CONVEY- Counteracting sexual violence and harassment: Engaging Youth in schools in digital education on gender stereotyping.

A total number of 12 young people aged 16-18 years participated. The youths are part of the Bulgarian Youth Red Cross – Plovdiv. The first meeting marked the beginning of an online simulation game development, aiming at educating and raising awareness on gender stereotyping and sexualisation of women and men. The online simulation game will be used as a tool to educate and contribute to change behaviour and attitudes of young people in relation to violence, harassment and gender stereotyping.

The young volunteers will take part in 6 meetings on the creation of the video game and contribute with their perspective on gender stereotypes, sexual violence and harassment, to the development of the online simulation game. Firstly, peer consultants will provide inputs and feedback to the development of the online simulation game. Then, peer consultants will participate in the testing of the tool.

The interactive game will allow young people to build themselves a story, through the choice of interchangeable characters and paths of history. Whatever the combination chosen by young people, the story will always contain some fixed elements, aiming at transferring to young people some of the cognitive elements of the project and to raise awareness about the potential risks associated to gender stereotyping and sexualisation of females and males.

This project is co-funded by the Rights, Equality & Citizenship Programme of the European Union and it’s being implemented by organisations in 6 EU countries: CESIE (IT), The Smile of the Child (GR), Hope for Children (CY), Sexual Violence Centre Cork (IE), Gender Alternatives (BG), Westminster City Council (UK).

On 01.02.2017 GAF was officially admitted and joined as a full member the National Network for Children. The network includes over 140 NGOs working with and for children in the country.

National network for children strives for a society where each child has a family of their own and enjoys the best living and development conditions. Its mission is to stand for children’s rights and well-being by uniting and developing a wide socially significant network of organizations and like-minded partners.

“Silence is not golden” project was implemented for 4 months (01.09-31.12.2016). It included 7 organizations working in 6 cities in Bulgaria. The stages of the project implementation were logically conceived as follows:

1.      Coordination meeting of the participants in the campaign

2.      Press release to the local medias

3.      Online campaign in the social networks

4.      Advocacy events in the cities focused on the issues of gender-based violence, domestic violence and the process of ratification of Istanbul convention.

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The project is focused specifically on prevention and combatting domestic violence among children and adolescents, effective defense of victims’ rights and interests  by providing interdisciplinary services – legal and psycho-social consultations; effective work with domestic violence perpetrators within a program under art.5 paragraph 1 point 5 of the Law on Protection against Domestic Violence /LPDVA/; improving the skills of professionals applying  LPDVA and coordination of their work.

Implementation period: 01.01. – 31.12.2017.

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The Gender Alternatives Foundation (Plovdiv, Bulgaria) was selected to participate in a learning exchange with the Jusoor center for Studies and Development (Tripoli, Lybia) in the implementation of the CSO WINS project.

After the advocacy training held in Barcelona from the 4th to the 9th April 2016, 24 association of the Southern Mediterranean have had the chance to draft an action plan proposal to improve the condition of women in their local and/or national context. The evaluation of proposals was accomplished in Algeria on May 31st 2016 and 8 associations were selected to deploy their campaign in the next following months. On this basis, they will receive technical support from the CSO WINS project and accompaniment of one of the 12 associations with high expertise in advocacy, which developed the successful practices. In total, 8 partnerships will be created in order to strengthen the mutual learning and the exchange of experiences.

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