12 Questions

We are answering #YourQuestions with a new column on Citizen Participation Forum’s Instagram and Facebook pages.

Numerous studies show that a significant part of Bulgarian society distrusts both institutions and groups such as civic society organizations*. In order to reverse this trend, we at Citizen Participation Forum try to speak as much as possible about the work of civic society organizations and their role in society, as well as about the essence of the democratic values we profess.

One of the reasons for the lack of trust in civic society organizations is the lack of awareness about our activities. Many people know little or nothing about us because we are rarely featured in the products of our most popular means of mass communication – television. At the same time, as civic organizations, we are often witnesses or objects of negative, often false information about the objectives of our work, and we are often even attacked personally.

That is why we decided to ask young people what are the questions that most often come up when it comes to civic organizations – or more commonly NGOs; what they would like to know about us and our causes and how we put our mission into practice. The first three questions we answered are:

• What does it mean that the Citizen Participation Forum is a “network” of civic organizations?
• What are the characteristics by which Citizen Participation Forum chooses the causes it supports?
• Which institutions does the Citizen Participation Forum work with?

Follow our Instagram and Facebook profiles to see the answers!
*See, for example, the survey “Trust in NGOs in Autumn 2021“, conducted by Alpha Research for the Open Society Institute – Sofia.