The project "Civic Education in Action" is a continuation of two successful projects that we implemented in 2014-2016, related to teaching history of the recent past and civic education. The objective of the project is to support the teachers who will teach in civic education classes after the introduction of civic education as a subject in schools from the academic year 2020/2021.

Activities

1. Testing of the civic education curricula for XI and XII grades
Following a competition, nine motivated teachers successfully joined the pilot part of the project "Civil Education in Action", which aims to test the syllabus for civic education for 11th and 12th grade, developed by the Ministry of Education. Participation consists in teaching two modules of six hours in the first term of 11th and the second term of 12th grade, in the spring (March-May) and the autumn (October-December) in 2018. The module content and methods were developed with the help of experts, one of whom is also available to every teacher and will visit the class as a guest lecturer.

2. 20 Training modules for teachers (reaching 250 teachers)
We plan to organize 20 teacher trainings for teachers of history, philosophy and civic education with historians and educators in the field of communism, democracy and civic rights (continuing the good practices we developed during the previous projects supported by America for Bulgaria). This time, Sofia Platform will certify itself as an organization offering life-long learning trainings for teachers, pending approval from the Ministry of Education.

3. 2 Summer Schools for University Students (reaching 60 students)
With the start of this project we have established a tradition that we hope to continue and even expand in the future. In 2018 and 2019, we held two summer schools with students from all over Bulgaria in the town of Belene, with whom we spent five days talking openly about communism in Bulgaria.

4. 25 Town Hall Meetings (reaching 1000 citizens)
We plan to organize a series of public discussions where we invite young, successful individuals to go back to their hometowns and take part in a discussion with local audience about how democracy has given them the chance to pursue their dreams in a way communism could have never allowed. This is an attempt to start bridging the divide between the centre (capital) and periphery (country side), as well as to use personal stories to illustrate rather abstract concepts like democracy, the EU and rights and freedoms. The personal stories of local citizens, returning to their hometowns will serve as a starting point for a discussion with one expert as a way to make facts about the communist past and nature of democracy relatable and understandable. As the topic of communism is largely neglected, engaging people in a conversation is an ideal tool to make them critically reflect on their past and the lessons we should learn from it.

5. International Conference marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the communist regime in Bulgaria
We will use the anniversary to take a snapshot at the activities undertaken to strengthen democracy and critically reflect on the communist past for the past 30 years. The event will take place in Sofia in November 2019 and will be organized in cooperation with a large coalition of other Bulgarian and international organizations.


Materials
Funding organization:
America for Bulgaria Foundation