Slovenian NGO Platform Shares Experience with Bulgaria

In May 2014, Ms Elitsa Akseva, Liaison Officer of the Bulgarian Platform for International Development (BPID), spent four days in Ljubljana at the office of SLOGA, the Slovenian development CSO platform. The aim of this exchange, supported by TRIALOG, was to gather inspiring insights in the work of SLOGA that will be useful for the activities of the Bulgarian platform.

This is Ms Akseva’s report:
During my job placement at SLOGA, I got acquainted with the working methods of the Slovenian NDGO Platform. I was interested to learn how SLOGA communicates with the MFA and met advocacy officer Ana Kalin, who told me about the post-2015 communication campaign undertaken by SLOGA. In 2013, the Platform initiated the campaign by sending a position on the post-2015 agenda to the Slovenian Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA). In June 2013, SLOGA participated in a panel discussion on the post-2015 strategy in Riga. At the beginning of 2014, it sent another position update to the MFA. Together with environmental NGOs in Slovenia, SLOGA produced a joint manifest and sent it to candidates for the European Parliament just before the EP Elections in May 2014.

Of interest to me was also to see how colleagues collaborate and share their responsibilities. For example, communication officer Iva Likar is dealing with the weekly news, while the director Marjan Huc is responsible for the overall vision and goals of the platform and for the development of relations with state representatives.

An inspiring part of my internship was the Euro-Mediterranean Conference 'Stronger Together', organized by the Anna Lindt Foundation. The purpose of this conference was to outline possible ways for cooperation between countries in the Mediterranean region, to discuss the progress of civil society in the countries of the Arab Spring and to define future challenges. The situation in Syria, women's rights, problems of humanitarian aid, the role of the European Union, the need to build strategic partnership between countries of the region and the EU were some of the issues discussed at the conference.

As a whole, I found my experience in Ljubljana rewarding and I am looking forward to future cooperation with the Slovenian Platform.


Photo courtesy of Elitsa Akseva: Elitsa Akseva.

Information provided by Elitsa Akseva elitsa.akseva@bpid.eu