Funding organization: UNHCR Bulgaria
Duration: 01/01/2024 – 31/12/2024

Beneficiaries: Refugees, asylum-seekers and Ukrainian citizens with temporary protection.

General objective: After 15 years of fruitful partnership, UNHCR and CRWB will implement in 2024 the ‘Empowering Lives’ project, focusing on comprehensive social assistance and meaningful integration of refugees, asylum seekers and beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine, especially women and girls, in Bulgaria. The project’s primary objectives are to strengthen the capacity of refugees and asylum seekers, especially women and girls, to access their rights and foster efficient inclusion. Through strategic interventions, the project seeks to support access to registration, to information and to social services, as well as promoting community engagement, women’s empowerment and support for women’s entrepreneurship.
Activities: To achieve these ambitious objectives, CRWB will implement a large range of activities that goes from social consultations and assistance, to psychological individual and group sessions, thematic workshops, art exhibitions and awareness-raising campaigns. Please contact us to learn more about the “Empowering Lives” project and how you can support.

Project Goals:

• Guarantee access to public and medical services, legal procedures and documentation for beneficiaries, ensuring that their rights are safeguarded. Through social assistance, the provision of information and active support in bureaucratic procedures, the project aims to facilitate the integration of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers and Ukrainian citizens with temporary protection.
• Provide access to mental health and emotional support services for people suffering from traumas or difficulties to du war, displacement or violence.
• Generate community mobilization and meaningful inclusion by realizing 2 awareness-raising campaigns, 10 community dialogues events, as well as 2 art exhibitions promoting visibility of refugees in the public space of the host society.
• The project initiates a mapping study to comprehensively understand the skills and needs of refugee women, providing valuable insights for tailored support. Finally, 12 workshops will be implemented, gathering beneficiary women, teenager girls, boys and men, around one skill-development or cultural exchange activity, and one discussion topic related to gender equality for the first six months of the project. The aim of these events is to create a safe, virtuous space for dialogue, free expression and reflection on notions of gender, sexual domination and physical, mental and political violence, while offering a recreational or educational activity for all.