The mayor Yordan Yordanov, Deputy Mayor Vladimir Trendafilov, Secretary Kalina Georgieva and ten other employees of the municipality of Dobrich participated in a three-day training from December 8 to 10, organized by the Bulgarian School of Politics “Dimitry Panitza” (BSoP). The aim of the training was for the representatives of the municipality to acquire knowledge of working with a platform for civic participation and to develop key skills for working with citizens. The platform created and presented to the trainees is based on open source software “Consul” and enables transparent and democratic governance with the active participation of citizens. The digital tool for the needs of the municipality of Dobrich was developed by the Bulgarian School of Politics Dimitry Panitza”. It was presented in detail by the IT expert Todor Valchev, who also moderated a practical exercise on working with the software. The training program also presented good practices for citizen participation in governance. The educational expert Mariyana Georgieva and the political scientist Hristo Panchugov gave a lecture and held a workshop on successful models for communication between citizens and administration. The two speakers also prepared and conducted group work on possible successful ways to activate citizens to participate in the decision-making process. The executive director of BSoP, Ivan Nachev, joined as a trainer, who, together with Mariyana Georgieva, spoke about mediation and conflict resolution.
The training is part of the project “Joint decisions for better governance of Dobrich municipality”, which is implemented by the Bulgarian School of Politics “Dimitry Panitza” and is financed by the Operational Program “Good Governance” (OPGG), co-financed by the European Social Fund of the European Union.