The first opening event in Bulgaria under the STORY_S project anti-discrimination campaign was on 19 April, 2019 at 135 High School “John Amos Comenius”. The Bulgarian partners under the project – Bulgarian Youth Forum and HESED worked actively to prepare the spread of the campaign events involving mentees and their peers in creating the materials – posters, in Awareness-raising workshops and training them to take active role in the citizenship incubators that were to follow.
The opening events took place in the period April – July, 2019, not only in different places in Sofia, but also in other Bulgarian cities as Kyustendil, Hisarya, Rakitovo. The involvement of mentees and mentors, supported by the teams of BYF and HESED, had a great impact on the participants in the opening events, who had the opportunity to learn more about the “Story_s” project, the campaign and the topic of discrimination from first person. Schools, daily centers, educational-boarding school and Sofia University were the hosts of the activities and their initiators, providing conditions for open and friendly discussion, transfer of knowledge and raising awareness about discrimination and the methods to prevent it. Definitely the posters had additional contribution to provoke thoughts and sharing of experience related to display of discrimination.
The STORY_S anti-discrimination campaign has a great potential to broaden the spread of its main message through opening events and citizenship incubators in more places in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian teams of BYF and HESED already received invitations to present it in two more big cities – those of Plovdiv and Kazanlak.
