At the beginning of June 2015, the “New Road”, Hairedin association and the Bulgarian School of Politics “Dimitry Panitza” started the implementation of a partnership project „Encouraging civic participation of young Roma“. The project is in a thematic area “Social inclusion and empowerment of vulnerable groups”, thematic priority “Empowerment of vulnerable groups” and is financed by the NGO Programme under the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism (2009 – 2014).

The duration of the project is 10 months. The project aims to support more active involvement of the Roma community in the public policies development and decision-making processes by creating conditions for young Roma to publicly discuss their problems and seek solutions for them. During the project the reasons for low level of civil participation of Roma minority will be identified, necessary knowledge and skills for increasing civic participation will be defined, and training of young Roma, who are public opinion leaders, will be implemented. The main goal is to encourage the young people to transfer the acquired knowledge and skills to other members of their communities and to contribute to positive change.  Within the project, the Roma trainees should develop and publicly present nonfinancial projects related to important issues for their community. They will be supported by mentors – Bulgarians or Roma, who are recognised political and civic leaders. The Program participants, who will be from different regions of the country, will create a network for experience exchange in solving Roma problems and promoting civic participation.