2002
Project:"Bridging The Gap Between Elected Representatives And Voters. Open Dialogue: Educational programs for prevention of trafficking in the secondary schools"
From July till October 2002 WAD together with 4 partner organizations from the National Network for Equal Opportunities ("Ideas and Values" Foundation- Sandanski, "Interclub - Friends of Bulgaria"
- Vratza, "Animus - Plovdiv" Foundation and the NGO Information Center - Gabrovo, completed successfully the project aiming to provoke a public discussion of regional and national level for prevention
measures against trafficking of human beings. We wanted also those measures to become a part of the educational programs of the high schools.The project started with a regional research on the level of information and interest of parents, teachers, institutions and children about trafficking.
The analysis showed that:
- Young people are more sensitive to the problem, but their knowledge is not sufficient, gained mainly by the mass media.
- Parents consider the problem to be very serious - "one of the most important ones of today's society", but they don't have enough information on it. They consider the importance of school in the fight against the trafficking, but still believe the biggest responsibility has the parliament, followed by the police. Less responsible are considered the local authorities and the non-profit organizations.
- Teachers consider most of their students are in danger of being involved in traffic. According to them there is a need of campaigns and classes for prevention of trafficking. Teachers do not consider school to be a factor, strongly related to the preventive work.
- Institutions do not have special funds, procedures and specialists for working with victims of trafficking.
Other activities, which took place during the project implementation:
- Four questionnaires were elaborated - for parents, teachers, students and representatives of different institutions. 783 people filled the questionnaires.
- 11 public discussions took place in Petrich, Sandanski, Blagoevgrad, Orjahovo, Biala Slatina and other border cities, with the active participation of experts, representatives of the local administration and councils, social services and the departments for child protection.
- The research results and the formulated concrete recommendations were presented on a roundtable in Sofia to the parliamentarians, NGOs and institutions working on the problem of trafficking of human beings.
