The joint project of the Sofia Platform Foundation and Street Law, Inc., supported by the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria, ‘Lawyers Helping Civics Teachers’ has come to an end. The goal of the initiative is to assist civic education (CE) teachers in Bulgaria in teaching topics with a legal focus by including the participation of lawyers in the classroom.

What did we achieve?

With the help of experts and our partners at Street Law, Inc., we developed six lesson plans and worksheets in Bulgarian and English for students on topics such as the rule of law, anti-corruption, separation of powers and the justice system, European law, and more. DXC Technologies lawyers participated in four training sessions to prepare themselves for the civic education classes. Subsequently, five teams of teachers and lawyers were formed. Together with the teams, we visited four schools in the country during the second term of the 2021/2022 school year. The first joint lesson on Contracts was hosted by the local school in Chelopech. At the we worked on ‘European Law and Institutions’. We discussed the rule of law with teachers and students from the ‘Petar Beron’ Secondary School of Foreign Languages in Montana. The tour ended in Petrich, where we had a block of classes on ‘Fundamental Constitutional Rights of the Human Being’ at the ‘Prof. Asen Zlatarov’ School. On all topics, the teams of teachers and lawyers worked together with the Evelina Ivanova-Vardzhijska and the team of the Sofia Platform Foundation. Different interactive methods were used, aiming to promote collaborative work and encourage discussions on topics related to law and democratic governance.

What is next?

A teaching guide on civic education for lawyers is to be published, and there is a possibility of potential continuation and expansion of this joint initiative to include more lawyers to help teach legal topics in civic education classes.   The project is implemented by the Sofia Platform Foundation in partnership with Street Law, Inc., DXC Technology and UnitedLex and with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria.