Dolna Banya, January 24-26, 2020
On January 26-28 BFPA organized a meeting of the teams working on the project „My body, my rights” from Sofia, Yambol and Montana. Representatives of the three locations shared their experiences from the implemented field activities. We discussed problems which health mediators, self-help group members and their partners face and paid special attention on possible ways and strategies for solving. Participants put accent on good practices that had been identified up to the moment. It was the perfect time to watch and discuss several videos, showing the fieldwork as well as image “memes” with messages, which show benefits of family planning.
Participants gave feedback also for the freshly prepared Manual for self-support groups and for the Health application for mobile devices, which will be useful in the future work on the project and after its ending. Divided into groups by locations the participants from Sofia, Yambol and Montana worked on possible ways of documenting stories for the most significant change of people’s lives as result of the work of project teams and health specialists.
On the next joint meeting stories will be shared and the most exciting will be selected. Story telling is a very powerful instrument, with which BFPA team forks in the last years in different formats.
The plans for the coming year include very important activities, and the most interesting and fresh ideas are coming from the grassroots. On top of the health prevention and family planning evergreen, special emphasis will be put on mobilizing resources of local communities. Here are some of the ideas to be implemented: campaigns and actions for cleaning the neighborhoods in spring, working for replacing the mud of the dirtiest streets in the most marginalized areas with gravel, dialogues with parents on the value of education, and with young men on health, interactions with municipalities for optimizing the living conditions in the districts also for the most marginalized, and more to come. Special accent is the focus on boys and young men, who deserve to be included as target group in need side by side with the support for maternal and child health.
The project „My body, my rights” (2018–2021) is implemented by BFPA in partnership with organizations from Serbia and Romani. It is implemented with the coordinative role of IPPF with the financial support of the company MSD via their "MSD for Mothers" program.
