by Jinwon Mun, James Nguyen and Gergana Dinkova

In each edition of the Social Policy and Politics course, students prepare social campaigns on causes that they find socially important. It was not different in Spring: we had two teams that addressed pertinent social causes. Below we post the description and the presentation of the campaign prepared by Jinwon, James and Gergana, which seeks to promote foster parenting in Bulgaria.  

Need of action

Bulgaria has a significant number of orphans. According to Bulgarian National Statistics Institute (Kandilarov, 2019), children living in poverty are 26.6% and the state has the highest rate in Europe of children separated from their parents because of poverty, physical or mental disability and lack of support.

There are two different types of care for orphans: Orphanage and foster family care. According to the 2007 documentary, “Bulgaria’s Abandoned Children”, there are many orphans with physical or mental issues. The disabled orphans are staying in outdated orphanages, which lack any types of renovations.

The case in Bulgaria

The development of orphanage is a hardly achievable task, having in mind the number of children and lack of teachers and nurses. Still, foster family care is a better alternative for orphans in Bulgaria. Sadly, this practice is not common, and many families prefer not to give it a chance.

Western example – Germany

Germany, for example, has a well-developed foster care system. When children are left behind, they can meet new foster family and have a chance for a better life. To become foster parents, people need to attend “Fostering School”. They will receive funds from the government; however, they need to have a stable annual income and suitable environment for raising a child. There is no requirement for a legal marriage, but there is one for German language proficiency, one for recognition of the cultural and historical background of the state and the child’s (PflegeKinderBerlin.de, 2022). In Germany, a foster child can live with a foster family permanently, until 18 years old, or for a certain amount of time. Also, whenever a child’s family has a serious issue, the child can stay with foster parents until its biological family resolves their issues.

Bulgaria’s lack of initiative

Bulgarians have no interest in being foster parents. 63% of the Bulgarians would not become foster parents under any circumstances (NFCA, 2021). Because of that, we want to do a campaign for Bulgarians to rethink about being foster parents. This is a noble act of giving a child the opportunity to live a stable life in a healthy environment. It is not a popular opinion among Bulgarian citizens and this campaign’s aim is to spread awareness for this initiative.

Measures/actions

We will promote the campaign through social media. These platforms enjoy a huge number of users who can spread the word of this mission and make a positive change not only for orphan children, but for childless families as well.

The campaign is available for feedback from Bulgarian citizens. Through social media platforms they can gain information and ask questions about the initiative, express their opinion and get help in potential fostering decisions.

Distribution channel

We will upload the poster which include the image of family and phrase, which can increase the media. The foster includes the information of how many children are separated from their parents, and it has “GET INVOLVED!” to encourage being foster family care. Since we will use image, the good social media distribution channel will be Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Because of that, we will use these platforms.

Target audience

The primary targeted audience is Bulgarian families with stable annual income, warm homes and willingness to be good parents to a little child in need. Orphanages are not a better option, having in mind their poor conditions and lack of proper care for the kids. Each family with the desire of expansion will be provided with the needed information and requirements and will have be quickly assigned a social worker that can help the speedy permission of fostering or adoption (European Social Fund, 2015).

The secondary target of this campaign will be the Bulgarian government. The Bulgarian Ministry of Labor and Social Policy (2022) has a goal of deinstitutionalization of child care in 15 years but it was not successful since many Bulgarians do not want to be foster parents. The campaign may not evoke the public mobilization but it might get people’s reflect on and comment about that policy. The secondary audience, Bulgarian government may get a chance to see the current situation, people’s willingness to take care about children and the reason why they do or do not want to do that.

Outcome

The success of this campaign will have a great outcome for Bulgarian orphans. The number of abandoned kids will reduce significantly, and Bulgarian families will come to understand that giving a child a chance for better life is not a bad or scary idea, as the majority of people think. The decrease in the number of orphans will potentially lead to decrease in poverty and unemployment among young people and will contribute to a more stable future generation. Also, the government might be able to check people’s reaction toward the foster family care system through the campaign. When they see that, they can find the reason and reform the policy related to the foster family care which can encourage Bulgarian people to be foster parents.

by Maria Terzieva, Erica Desjardins, Sviatoslav Hryhorenko

In each edition of the Social Policy and Politics course, students prepare social campaigns on causes that they find socially important. It was not different in Spring: we had two teams that addressed pertinent social causes. Below we post the description and the presentation of the campaign prepared by Maria, Erica and Sviatoslav, which advocates broad access to high-quality sexual education in all EU Member States. 

Proper and thorough teachings about the cognitive, social, and physical aspects of sexuality to the young adult generations contribute positive impacts on one’s reproductive health. The lack of high-quality sex education poses many risks. More specifically, experts argue insufficient reproductive education can result in high rates of involuntary teenage pregnancy and high rates of people suffering from HIV/AIDS/STIs.

The EU declares that each Member State holds the responsibility of providing sexual and reproductive education to young people. Although nearly every Member State declares sexuality education as mandatory, the quality and content greatly vary throughout the EU which results in major inconsistencies regarding this topic. Sexuality education is not mandatory in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. Additionally, it has been observed that Nordic and Benelux countries are known for more comprehensive sexual education, whereas Eastern and Southern Europe have insufficient or nonexistent sex education.

The present issue to improve is the lack or insufficient extent of concrete, high quality, and consistent sexual and reproductive health education among young people. Sexual education can include a wide range of topics, as well as provide better understandings of one’s health, combat gender biases, combat health risks, reduce involuntary pregnancies, deter sexual abuse, and much more.

We suggest the three following policies on how to provide better sexuality education. Firstly, sex education should become a standalone class provided by the different education systems of the EU member states. This way teacher training on how to approach the sensitive subject and curriculum adjustments by the national ministries will be expected. Making the campaign official on a national level would also give the right to different monitoring organs to require information about the quality and contents of the classes. Secondly, school and public libraries should be urged to provide up-to-date books on sex education so everyone can have access to them. Thirdly, peer educator programs would also be prudent to cover even more young adults who distrust authorities.

This campaign would target kids aged 10 to 17 in both rural and urban areas. This will also include kids who are homeschooled. The second target audience of the suggested initiative is teachers, school staff, and local opinion leaders: people who could potentially answer the questions on the topic and are trusted by both kids and their parents. The third one is parents. The main distribution channels for the campaign would be social media pages as well as on-site school and library posters. With the idea of normalizing the topic and its discussion, opinion leaders would also contribute with their exposure to the publicity of our campaign. The “Sex education is our right” campaign will constitute an additional source of information for kids to rely on. It will also enable a two-way communication channel between kids and educators with an opportunity of remaining anonymous (an important factor for many children throughout a sensitive-topic education). The social media page will have posts about human anatomy, sex education, contraception, etc. The information will be provided in a simple easy-to-read manner. There will be video materials for a better learning experience. Our campaign will focus on educating children on the topic to assure safe sexual experiences, lower the level of unexpected pregnancies, and lower the number of sexual assaults. Rather than convincing pupils that abstinence is the way of protecting and avoiding the dangers of STIs and pregnancy, they will be taught sex education and healthy practices of intimate interaction.

In recent years, young adults around Europe have been demanding that they have access to quality sex education in order to have a better understanding and freedom with their bodies. We as part of that community as well as representatives of the non-governmental sector would like to second that notion and thus, urge the acceptance of our campaign. We understand there could be many challenges such as the unification of agendas on the topic, public opinion, and abuse of the program to further harmful stereotypes, but we are motivated and hopeful. Sex education is a right and should be regarded as such by the whole of Europe.