Anti-discrimination Backpack

Spring is coming and on the 1st of March Bulgarians celebrate Baba Marta Day. We’ve decided to begin preparing  in advance, so this is the right time to start making Martenitsas. Martenitsa is a traditional small piece of decoration, made of white and red thread, worn as a bracelet in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece and Romania.

Infinite Opportunities Association has been invited to attend the Martenitsa workshop in National Ethnographic Museum. This master class was organized with the help of CVS-Bulgaria for refugee children.
We have gladly accepted the invitation and visited the workshop. It has been great time not only for children, but also for their teachers and, of course, us. We learned how to made martenitsas-bracelet and dolls. It’s easier to make the bracelet working together, so it was a great practice for working in pairs.

Giorgia, the CVS Bulgaria volunteer, introduced us to children and we had a small conversation with them about hate speech, discrimination and human rights…

What is a successful street action? It is when all the conversations you had spreading the word about the No Hate Speech Movement are carefully listened to and when a passerby stops to ask for more info about the movement, because he’s seen the heart sign before.  Collecting faces against hate speech #4. To be continued…
Какво е успешна улична акция? Това е, когато всички разговори разпространени не на Езика на омразата са внимателно слушани и минувач спира да попита за повече информация за движението, защото е видял знака със логото - сърце.  Събиране на лица срещу речта на омразата # 4. Следва продължение ...

Starting the end of last week Facebook users can specify their gender and sexual preferences more precisely. The social network increased personal gender options to more than 50. Every FB-customer can identify themselves using more than one category, for example: Female, Cis, Cis Female, Cis Gender, Cis Woman, etc. At this moment this option can be used only by users with accounts in English version of social network.

For example, Facebook offers a great choice for transgender: from trans - a general category that encompasses all transgender categories, to more meaningfull narrow categories, like trans -Female, -Male, -Man, -Person. There are also variants of genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, two spirit and pangender, and agender. Customer also can choose Intersex, Gender Fluid, Androgyne, Neutrois, Bigender or Neither.

Unsurprisingly, this improvement evoked a lot of criticism. One of the opinions suggest removing the gender and sexual preference information from social network c…

After open call for primary school students organizers of the Safer Internet Action Day (SID) in Bulgaria have received around 1 000 letters, drawings, pictures, sculptures from dozen schools all over the country.  The coordinator of this event, Georgi Apostolov, told us that he was pleasantly surprised about the number of participants, because it was not a competition, just a proposal. The title of the exhibition “The hero is you” was supposed to show that everyone has a possibility to become a small hero through his or her online and offline behavior”.You can visit this exhibition online.
The exhibition was just a small part of the bigger event that took place at the Information office of European Parliament in Sofia on the on the 11th of February.
Each yearpeople across all over the world celebrated Safer Internet Day (SID). The main purpose of this initiative is to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially among children and youngsters.…

A young guy told us: “I don’t care about that stuff that is going on internet. I strongly believe that people, who care too much about bulling or cyberstalking have mental disorders.” His friends had nothing to add. We asked this boy and his friends about their personal experience on internet. Did they know about the idea of the Safe Internet? “Yes, I heard that terrible story about Amanda Todd”, - said a beautiful young girl, “But, you know, he (shepointed on that guy, which just seconds ago told us about his thoughts) does not care because it can never happened with him. He is too popular in our school”. Young people around started supportiveremarks: “Yeah, we don’t need your information about No Hate Speech and about Safety on Internet. We don’t care and you also shouldn't be so serious about it”.
We had this short conversation yesterday, on theSafer Internet Day, in the Sofia Park around National Palace of Culture. Sun was shining brightly, not a single cloudwas on the sky. On…