Volunteers Offer Expertise to Grassroots Initiatives
A group of Peace Corps volunteers and the Bulgarian Center for Development and Training (BCDT)—an NGO formed by the staff of the USAID Participant Training Program—recently conducted a series of pilot initiatives to connect Bulgarian and American professionals with local organizations seeking small-scale training and consulting. The goals of the resulting Volunteer Network for Training and Consulting are to seek inexpensive, creative ways to address local needs and to promote volunteerism in Bulgaria. The initiative, supported by the USAID Participant Training Program, builds upon earlier exchanges in which Peace Corps volunteers with specialized expertise traveled to other Peace Corps locations where their skills were in high demand.
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| Bulgarian and American volunteers visit Simitli to offer advice about the municipal newsletter |
In a recent exchange, two Bulgarian volunteers and a Peace Corps volunteer traveled from Gabrovo to Simitli to respond to a request coordinated by a Peace Corps volunteer there for expertise in journalism and public relations. In Simitli, the volunteers met with representatives of a new youth magazine to discuss journalistic ethics and ways to gather material and improve layout design. The volunteer team also met with the Municipal Secretary to discuss Simitli's new municipal newsletter, and with the founder of a day center for mothers to explore ways to promote the facility and maximize its use.
Other exchanges have focused on computer skills training at a chitalishte in Trud, website development at the Ethnographic Museum in Plovdiv, and the creation of promotion techniques for a hospice in Gabrovo.
The initiative is growing as an exciting and promising partnership between Peace Corps, with its network of American volunteers all over Bulgaria, and BCDT which, as the successor of the USAID Participant Training Program, will inherit a rich database of nearly 4,000 Bulgarian professionals trained by USAID.
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