NEWS

Reflect (impact), rethink (cooperation), & reinvent (the future)

Botanica Life Foundation took part in an international conference which was held on 13 October in Varna. The participants were Bulgarian organizations, whose projects are supported by the Velux Foundations in Denmark, as well as representatives of the Danish organization.

Some of the projects, on which the organizations are currently working , were presented at the conference. They are in different areas, but have one thing in common-they work to solve social and educational problems of children at risk.

The participants were gladly welcomed by Jens-Jorgen Pedersen, Head of programme for Central and Eastern Europe for Velux Foundations.”Here I see people completely wedded to the causes of their organizations”, he exclaimed.

Among the participants were New Bulgarian University(Know-how centre ),Equilibrium Assosiation, Centre for Inclusive Education, National Network for children, Workshop for civic initiatives foundation, Bis Bard Association.

Botanica Life Foundation is the youngest of these organizations .It was represented by the Chair of its Board Dr.Apostol Apostolov. He shortly presented the concept of the project, on which the foundation is working at the moment - establishing a training centre for sustainable agriculture and youth participation. He highlighted the need of engaging young people with land and agriculture, the possibilities of establishing a business in this field and the indispensable joint efforts of the society as a whole to recover Bulgarian villages and rural communities.

The audience reacted extremely positively. Some of the participants recognized in the project their own will to engage in ecological agriculture, others noted the increasing interest of young people in healthy eating and ecological way of life. Botanica`s team was pleasantly surprised by the offer from one of the participating organizations to be one of the first customers for the eco produce from Foundations` fields in the village of Nadarevo.

Thank you for the support, dear friends!

After the projects were presented, some ideas for cooperation and sharing of know how were discussed during group work the conference continued with. Several questions were posed, such as:

Is the NGO sector in Bulgaria stable? Is there the need to cooperate with municipalities, businesses, universities, and other partners? Can organizations working with children at risk cooperate and what can be done to fulfill such a partnership?

Two of the members of Botanica Life`s Team –Diana Yosifova and Aneta Mileva took part in the discussions.

The conference participants expressed their joint will to cooperate in the long term in the field of education, completing the process of deinstitutionalization of children and young people, participation in research projects, etc. The organizations agreed that working with children and young people at risk is challenging and need innovation, but unfortunately such types of innovations are not financially supported by the government or the EU. In this connection, the participants expressed their gratitude to the Velux Foundations, who stimulate and encourage the innovations in Bulgaria.

You can see short presentation of the conference in the following video.