Dupnitsa: Advocacy Through the Eyes of the Young

On January 17, 2023, in the Community Center ‘Zora’ in Dupnitsa – the third oldest “chitalishte” in Bulgaria, founded in 1858, the young volunteers of BFPA, Roma and non-Roma, showed the

photo voice exhibition that they created as a part of the local campaign ‘Do not just trust, go and find the truth for the life in the neighborhood’. The young Roma show what they want to change in the Kavaklia neighborhood and in the city through their own eyes, with their own words. “I want it to be like this, I want to remove this junk so that the beauty can be seen,” says Chris, one of the participants. “I want there a traffic light and the railway line to be secured”; “I want sidewalks in the neighborhood”; “I want the tunnel to be free of rubbish and plastered”…

The winner in the contest “Fake News Hunters” – for the prevention of fake news, received a tablet for the developed topic related to the false information spread of 5G networks, there were also prizes for all the other participants. Thanks to the kind hosts, the exhibition will remain in the community center for two weeks, and on April 8th we will be there again to see how they refresh the pedestrian tunnel at the beginning of the neighborhood with graffiti and to show the exhibition again, this time in the municipality!

Soon we will see what is happening in Blagoevgrad, from where the health mediator Katya Kirilova and Gergana Gogova visited the event. We extend our thanks to Ioana Peneva and Nikolay Dimitrov from Sofia, as well as to Nedyalko Atanasov, Kristiyan Ivanov and the whole group from Dupnitsa, to Alexandra Yordanova from the community center and the health mediator Daniela Ljubenova.

The local campaigns are part of the BFPA project “Youth Voices, Youth Choices”, supported by the programme “MSD for mothers”.