Yambol, September 24, 2020
Montana, September 28, 2020
At the end of the second year of BFPA’s project “My body, my rights”, supported by the initiative for socially responsible business “MSD for mothers”, the association organized round tables on the need and benefits of family planning with a focus on vulnerable communities in two of the project locations. During the meetings a recap of the activities up to now was made and future ones were discussed for the third year. Both events were attended by municipal representatives, Regional health inspectorate, Regional health insurance fund, health mediators, health specialists, representatives of local NGOs, Community support centers, social workers and most importantly – members of the target communities in which activities are implemented.
A special accent was BFPA’s new short animated products - “Family planning” and “Pregnancy with a smile”. The discussion was on the activities until now and their effect on improving the level of information in the target groups, the need for such activities in general, the best working communication channels in the Roma community, the role of the self help groups and the health mediators, the difficulties caused by COVID-19 and other problems, i.e. the duplication and decentralization of social activities from different institutions. A recapitulation of what has been done until now in Montana was made by Dr. Radosveta Stamenkova, Executive Director of BFPA and Petar Tzvetanov, local Project Coordinator, and for Yambol – Tzveta Petkova, member of NNHM’s Board and Kina Asenova, local Project Coordinator.
During the discussion and exchange of ideas on expanding the existing activities and including new ones for the third project year with special attention were considered the opinions of people working in the field and of the active young people from the communities. The emphasis was on informational activities for HIV and STI prevention among young people – an informational campaign in the community as well as showing BFPA’s topical video products in schools. The reason was the informational campaign implemented by young people the day before in two locations in Kosharnik and Ogosta neighborhoods which proved to be so successful that the plan is for it to be repeated in more locations, including the centre of Montana in order to reach a wider audience and so that the young Roma can get out of their neighborhood and communicate with peers from other parts of the city. Our main task in both locations is to stimulate the municipality to implement a family planning program supported by the municipality budget the way it is happening in Sofia.
And we continue with activities for the third project year which we hope to expand even beyond the ideas, discussed at the round tables.
