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Amalipe Center approved students for participation in the program of the Trust for social achievement "Equal opportunity - access to secondary education" for 2016 - 2017. The aim of the program is to support education in secondary level students who are highly motivated to learn, but found serious financial difficulties for it. The leading criterion in the selection of scholars was their personal motivation and commitment, prominent both by the cover letter and the way the form is completed. Priority candidates were recommended by schools working within program "Every student will be a winner," centers for community development or other volunteers to Amalipe.

Criteria for selection of candidates were:

To be from low-income families

Have a problem with long distances to school

To have success from the previous year not less than Good 3.50 

Have a small number of unexcused absences in the previous academic year.

Be recommended by the school included in the program of Center "Amalipe" to reduce the dropout of Roma children from school "Every student will be a winner", Center for Community Development or have participated in the program in previous years and have provided the necessary documents.

Successful students will receive support expressed in purchasing textbooks and / or travel card (if traveling from another location). Each case was evaluated individually on the basis of a set of criteria listed above. As a result, we were able to approve 63 students in the allocated quota of TCA for 60 participants.

Center "Amalipe" will support 35 students more,supporting them with textbooks.

Priority Programme is purchasing textbooks. Tutorials and additional training materials will not be purchased. All students supported by transportation cards should take invoices with data of Center "Amalipe" and send them by post to the address Veliko Tarnovo, p.b. 113.

The approved scholars should continue to enhance their success, attend regular classes and motivate their school mates to actively participate in school life.

For more information: Denitsa Ivanova, coordinator of the program: 062 / 600-224; 0884-85-75-78

List of students approved for support under the "Equal Chance - access to secondary education" 2016/2017 Program, as well as those supported by the Center "Amalipe" see here.

Photos: esf.bg

On September 29, 2016 in the town of Sofia was held the sixth extraordinary session of the Monitoring Committee of the Operational Programme "Human Resources Development" 2014-2020. Minister Rusinova opened the meeting with the announcement that for the first time in recent years the unemployment rates in the country has been reduced, and now it is below the average European level - 7.4%. An enhanced implementation of the operational program is also visible, 62% of funds in its budget are already allocated, and 40% are agreed. Currently procedures to approximately 1 billion lev are being implemented. Aurelio Cecilio, Head of B / 5 "Romania, Bulgaria" DG "Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion" of the European Commission stressed in its opening remarks, that he welcomes the efforts of the Managing Authority and MLSP to achieve full integration of parents of children with disabilities and other vulnerable groups on the labour market. He stressed, however, that in order to provide comprehensive support public bodies have to work together with the social partners and NGOs. He placed two important questions related to the development and implementation of the OP: the status of the procedure for establishing a mechanism for the implementation of the so, called "simplified costs" which very much would facilitate the beneficiaries and would make the implementation of OPHRD much efficient, and the progress in implementing the preliminary conventions (ie ex-ante conditionalities), which in the case of OPHRD are preparing the system for monitoring the implementation of the National strategy for Roma integration. MA to OPHRD promised to provide detailed information on both issues at the next meeting of the MC of OPHRD.

During the meeting were agreed changes in several operations as follows:

Operation "Adult Education, who have passed literacy courses" - no basic changes, only texts related to initiative for youth employment and added additional indicators of unemployed Roma aged 29 years and 30 - 54 years including those, having low education. The operation has comments from Ministry of Finance on state aid, which will be reflected in the Guidelines for the Application.

The representative of the European Commission, Aurelio Cecilia, reacted strongly to the trend observed in this programming period, all schemes to fall under the system of minimum benefits. He said the need to review and assess the types of aid and regulations that are currently in use by operational programs, since according to him, most of the operations that have been approved and / or proposed for approval are under the regime "de minimis" and this creates prerequisite for abuse and risk to the overall economic development of the country. His recommendation was to invest in the development of expertise, training and other forms of support for those working in the operational programs to equip them with necessary knowledge and skills about what would be the most appropriate schemes and state aid regulations. Minister Rusinova supported the statement of Mr. Cecilio and announced that next week will begin discussing the procedures of the meeting of the Coordination Council in the management of EU funds so that they can be applied to future schemes and better coordination between Ministry of Finance and the various governing bodies.

Changes in the operation "New job" - increased budget from 100 to 131 million lev by increasing indicators for included unemployed and inactive participants - at least from 9825 and indicators for unemployed and inactive participants - 8188. It is envisaged that the increase budget will enable more than 2500 unemployed and economically inactive people to be employed. The Managing Authority will publish further information with a list of grant agreements with additional resources after the procedure to optimize budgets of the ranked proposals.

Changes in "Operation Danube partnerships for jobs and growth" include dropping the mandatory requirement applicants and partners to be from countries within the Danube region, but requiring mandatory partnership with at least one organization - EU Member State. It has a regulation for foreign partners to finance their activities themselves as a mechanism and procedure that will be detailed in the application guidelines.

The new operations approved by the members of the Monitoring Committee of the Operational Programme at the meeting of September 29 are:

Operation "New chance for social inclusion" - aimed at piloting a model for expert assessment of disability and employability of people with disabilities through direct application of ISF standards of the World Health Organization. The operation is to support / supplement to a previous operation approved by the Committee as the main candidate is eligible Social Assistance Agency and the partners are the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Health and national organizations of and for people with disabilities. The operation has comments by the Ministry of Health and UNICEF as the Managing Authority explained that according the specifics of the program and the topic it cannot allow transfer and since the standards will not be directly applied, the wording in the operation will be approach by analogy. The operation do not allow the inclusion of universities and NCPHA because they are not among the eligible beneficiaries. Regarding the question whether it provides adaptation and testing of children's version of the International Classification of Functioning of Man, Disability and Health (ISF), had been stated that the operation is aimed at people with disabilities and their families and children are not among the target groups .

Operation "Support for persons with disabilities" - originally planned to support the construction of day care centers for children with severe and multiple disabilities but as a result of comments of MRD and commitment to the updated plan for deinstitutionalization for the period 2016 - 2020 year (reviewed by Interdepartmental working group a high level of September 14, 2016 and is currently in the process of inter-ministerial coordination), it is expected this operation to be launched in January 2017 and eventually to have contracts with municipalities during teh summer. The measure is linked with the protests of parents of children with disabilities and the need to develop services for young people and people over 18 years. The budget of the operation is six million lev by the construction of a 6 day centers in 6 regional municipalities, most likely they will be linked with regions of planning. 

The last approved operation "Find me" with budget of 4 million lev is aimed at supporting the process of deinstitutionalization of children and youth in institutional care and residential care services. It will also finance the work with parents of children skills for independent living, supporting access to education, involvement of community volunteers and other activities. Eligible applicants are NGOs and social service providers, and partners can be municipalities and districts of municipalities. Regarding the proposal of Unicef the operation to expand the target group for children in the protection system including SBS and EBS, it was stated that SBS and EBS are not beneficiaries of the program and the operation is aimed at supporting social inclusion of children from specialized institutions and services residential as supporting their involvement in the community.

Regarding the proposal to extend the eligible candidates from the Managing Authority commented that it would add training organizations and community centers, but these NGOs are not excluded anyway. Theodora Krumova of Center "Amalipe", a member of organizations working for social inclusion and integration of marginalized groups, raised again the issue of the regulation of the operation under the regime "de minimis", which creates a risk to exclude many non-governmental organizations from the Application of the scheme and proposed the operation to be approved in principle and consider how it should be regulated as a form of state aid. It was agreed that the recommendations for review and better coordination are targeted to future operations and this can not be implemented at this stage.

At the end of the meeting changes in methodology for technical and financial evaluation of the project proposal were presented and agreed. 

For more information about the meeting and / or approved operations, please contact Dani Koleva, program director of the National Network for Children at dani.koleva@nmd.bg and Theodora Krumova, program director Amalipe of t_krumova@yahoo.com