Sofia, May 19, 2022
May 19, 2022, Thursday. A very important and good day for BFPA - we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the program "MSD for mothers" - an example of a truly socially responsible business. As our partners and supporters know, we are working on two projects from this program - the recently successfully completed and focused at the Roma community "My body, my rights", implemented in Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, and the currently gaining speed "Youth voices, youth choices", implemented in Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Northern Macedonia and focuses on young people, Covid and access to health services.
The day started in the Fakulteta neighborhood - there representatives of the global and Bulgarian office of MSD met with project coordinators from Montana, Sofia, Yambol, with health mediators from around the country and people from the Roma community in the neighborhood. There was a great discussion about the benefits of fieldwork, vaccine prophylaxis, cervical cancer prevention, self-help groups and community capacity building. The afternoon was in a completely different world - in the East Hall in the Parliament, together with key people from the communities we work for, we presented to the institutions the results and philosophy of the programs we implement.
We received great recognition for our efforts and achievements from the Minister and Deputy Minister of Health, the Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Policy, the Chair of Parliament's Health Comittee, the Director of MSD, the WHO Office and, last but not least, the Advisor of the Prime Minister for Health Professor Radka Argirova.
The day also served to present two of our products: a short and long version of the film about the project "My body, my rights", realized in Fakulteta district - Sofia, Kosharnik district - Montana, Raina Knyaginya district - Yambol and the villages of the Tundzha municipality , as well as the printed bilingual edition "Stories from the Ghetto", which collects the four best texts from a competition for a story about the everyday life of health mediators.
We have a real reason for pride and satisfaction! And we thank Petar Tsvetanov, Kina Assenova, Valentin Blagoev, Venelin Stoychev and many more like-minded people for their work and dedication. We end with perhaps the most important thing, stated in plain text by the Minister of Health Asena Serbezova: modern health and sexuality education is key, we owe it to young people and we must really implement it. Hopefully, in addition to words, the institutions will commit to practice which is also envisaged in the Plan for Recovery and Development after the Covid Pandemic. And we continue our active work in the thirtieth year of BFPA’s existence.
