Social Inclusion in Action: All special, all equal

From 8 to 15 April, 2022 in the city of Bankya (near Sofia), an international training “Social Inclusion in Action: all special, all equal” took place. The training was the second activity of the two training courses part of the “Social Inclusion in Action” project implemented by Cooperation for Voluntary Service “CVS – Bulgaria”.

In this international mobility there were 33 participants (including trainers, organizers and a social assistant), coming from 11 countries – Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey and the Czech Republic .

The training aimed to improve the youth workers’ understanding of the specifics of working with people with specific needs (motor, visual, mental) and how to include such people in their activities. Also to encourage the participation of young people with fewer opportunites in their local and international activities.

Experts from various fields working on social inclusion presented to the participants their personal examples as well as such from their work, and together with the participants, discussed ideas for the inclusion of youth with special needs.

Vanya Pandieva talked about her personal experiences as a person with a mobile disability and together with her expertise as a psychologist and her work experience, created an understanding among the participants in the training about the problems of people with special needs in Bulgaria. In return participants exchanged impressions about the situation in their countries.

Boyan Michev and Mihail Nedkov spoke from first-hand experience about how they cope as visually impaired people, but also how this does not stop them from being activists, volunteers, fighting for causes and at the same time working as experts in other fields.

Ivo Bordzhiev has many years of experience in working with people with intellectual disabilities in the “Maria’s World Foundation”. He talked about the good practices that lead to the success and achievements of the people he works with on a daily basis.

In one of the days, the participants had the opportunity to visit the only dark restaurant of its kind in the Balkans, where they entered into total darkness for dinner and put themselves in the shoes of blind people, who on the other hand were swimming in their own waters while leading the group through a delicious dinner in the dark.

Another day the group had a special visit from the journalist Katrin Dimitrova, who spoke with the team and some of the participants. She recorded the talks, prepared and broadcasted the interviews on Bulgarian National Radio, which you can listen (in Bulgarian) HERE.

We captured in photos the full range of emotions while sharing knowledge during these training days, which you can see and like on our Facebook profile.

The project “Social inclusion in action”, 2020-1-BG01-KA105-078909 is implemented with the support of the Erasmus+ program, KA1 Mobility of youth workers.