Valentin Kekhayov, a participant in the project Initiative for Building a Future Generation of Civic Leaders, funded by the EEA Active Citizens Fund, together with his friends created an alternative youth center in the town of Smolyan - a space for youth activities, informal and independent learning, physical activity and use of free time. Here's what he has to say about the lockdown state of emergency and how the organisation is filling his free time.
Before the pandemic began and the state of emergency was declared, our organisation offered a wide range of after-school activities and a one-to-one approach to our volunteers. This was because we had a well-equipped hall for all kinds of events - meetings, seminars, literary readings, debates, courses, cinema nights, celebrations, etc. Apart from that we sent many young people abroad to be trained for free, to gain knowledge and appropriate approach.
Each of us feels better when socializing and interacting with people with common interests, such as volunteering and personal development.
It is at this point, when we are forced to be socially distant, that we try to analyze and re-plan everything in order to stay in the civic sector after the pandemic.
We ourselves as an organization have done independently and in partnership a series of webinars for young people.
I participated as a panelist in a National Youth Forum webinar, where I had the honor to speak on the topic "Youth Work: youth spaces and youth inclusion". As a regional coordinator of the National Youth Forum, I was able to present my concerns about the governance of youth spaces, the need for targeted state and local funding, and to propose more in-depth networking at the national level.
We also participate in a series of webinars with our colleagues from the Municipal Youth Council - Shumen. The webinar series is aimed at young people who want to develop and acquire new skills.
So far they have passed - "21st century skills and how to develop them?" with Alexandra Mircheva. Alex touched on the topic of why we will need qualities such as flexibility, adaptability and willingness to learn new things to be competitive.
We also organized and held the webinar “How to be more productive?” with Hristo Stoyanov. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of one of the most useful and authoritative Bulgarian websites lifehack.bg - a media for business, leadership and productivity. Hristo presented effective methods for increasing productivity in times of social isolation. Members of our organizations learned more about what tools we can use to organize our daily life and boost our productivity at home.
On Saturday, the third web event of the "21st Century Skills" series on "Fake News and Media Culture" took place. Guest speaker was Venelin Dobrev, Co-founder of uspelite.bg - the largest good news media in Bulgaria with over 120 000 monthly readers.
The project “Initiative for the building of the next generation of civic leaders” is implemented with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area (EEA FM) 2014-2021, funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.