Photo: BG Be Active volunteers in action

2015 was a milestone year for Bulgarian ISCA member BG Be Active, which secured its first large-scale EU grant under the Erasmus+ Sport programme with the Collaborative Partnerships project Active School Communities (which kicked off this week in Berlin), won a Best Campaign award for MOVE Week in Bulgaria, and established a partnership with the Human Resource Development Centre (HRDC) in Bulgaria to ensure that its activities become more sustainable. HRDC is the national agency managing European Educational programmes and it has extensive experience and networks from the EU’s Erasmus programmes.

BG Be Active (BGBA) became the national coordinating organisation for MOVE Week in Bulgaria in 2013, and since then it has been developing new strategies and implementing new activities for Europe’s biggest physical activity promotion event. Even though this involvement only spans a couple of years, a lot of work has been done, with significant increase in MOVE Week events and numbers of participants in Europe’s least active country being the result.

The number of people who are keeping engaged in physical activity and are further developing their understanding of its benefits for health is not entirely clear, so BG Be Active is planning to carry out research about the more exact outcome of its work. So far we can be sure that the interaction and the awareness for physical activity is growing. For that reason BG Be Active is working even harder to create new partnerships and extend its reach in the public.

In 2015 the organisation started an EVS (European Voluntary Service) project, on the premise that bringing young people into the country from other parts of Europe would help to create more interesting events and broaden their scope. To fulfil this ambition the organisation developed a partnership with Human Resource Development Centre (HRDC) in Bulgaria.

HRDC is the national agency which is managing European Educational programs and has extensive experience within the field. Because it has been managing Erasmus and other initiatives successfully for a long time, it has developed a wide network of participating organisations. These organisations do not only participate in project implementation, but also create opportunities for young people to explore another country and gain new experiences by doing EVS projects.

The idea behind engaging EVS volunteers in MOVE Week is also that they will continue organising events when they go back to their home country and to make the event grow in their native country too.

Another important way HRDC has helped BGBA is to provide funding for the rewards BGBA gave to the most active schools participating in MOVE Week. These rewards are not only a way to acknowledge the engagement of schools that promote physical activity as a way of healthy living for their students, they also stimulating the schools and their peers to enhance their physical activity offers next year.

BG Be Active believes this new partnership is a good example of good practice. It uncovered new opportunities and will continue to grow and evolve the following years. Therefore BG Be Active would like to share this experience with other countries.

More about BG Be Active

BG Be Active is national organisation working within the field of health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) promotion. The organisation promotes the benefits of regular exercise and provides recreational activities that involve movement to Bulgarian citizens.

For the past 3 years BG Be Active has been the national coordinating organisation for MOVE Week and from 2014 for the NowWeMOVE campaign. During that period in our events have participated more than 200 000 Bulgarians from over 200 towns and villages around the country. In honour of these efforts it received a “Best Campaign” award for 2014 at the Eventex Awards in Sofia in February 2015.

In its work BG Be Active is using an innovative approach to activation and with its project and activities is trying to introduce some the best European practices on national level. You can find more about BG Be Active athttp://www.bgbeactive.org/

More about Human Resources Development Centre (HRDC)

Over 15 years HRDC has established itself as a successful national structure for the management of European educational programmes. Since 1999, the Centre has been actively involved in the administration and management of EU educational programs and initiatives. The Centre has gradually become more recognisable among the national education community at all levels, not only as administrator of European Union funded programmes, but above all – as a platform for exchange of innovative teaching methods and best practices to solve the challenges arising in the system education and training.

At the end of 2013, the programme and financial period of the European Training and Educational programme “Lifelong Learning” ended. The programme was administrated by HRDC in its capacity as a Bulgarian National Agency.

In recognition and as a sequel to the extraordinary results achieved by the programme, a new programme started from January 2014 – the new educational, training, youth and sport focused Erasmus+.

Along with the management of the sector programs “Komenski”, “Leonardo da Vinci”, “Erasmus”, “Grundtvig” and “Study Visits”, HRDC has systematically worked on the horizontal strategic aims of the Programme, such as eTwinning, the recognition and validation of skills (Europass and ECVET), academic validation in higher education (Bolonian Process), development of a national system for career orientation (Euroguidance), based on the practical analysis of the different educational and training systems (Eurydice and ReferNet), language studying (European Sign Language).

HRDC is a National Bulgarian Agency of administration of the Erasmus+ project for the period 2014-2020.

By Egle Lukosiunaite and Philipp Zimmermann, BG Be Active