As a culmination of INTEGRA project, RISSC and the Municipality of Rubano organized a cultural festival, called INTEGRA DAYS. The purpose of the event was to present to the citizens the results from the project and to give an insight about the foreigners in Rubano and their contribution to the development of the community. The 3-day programme included many diverse activities for various audiences.
INTEGRA DAYS was a three-day event and consisted of two movie festival nights on 4th and 11th of October, and an afternoon full of activities, testimonies and story telling on 6th of October. The film festivals nights were held at the Auditorium of the Municipality and proposed useful contents to reflect on the themes of integration and intercultural dialogue. Each of the festival nights was attended by more than 40 people who truly appreciated the initiative and enjoyed their time together.
The afternoon session featured the presentation of INTEGRA’s achievements and results, an intercultural workshop and a debate session. On this day the Mayor of Rubano Ms. Sabrina Doni awarded schoolchildren with “Jus Scholae” award - honorary citizenship to children with migrant background who have successfully completed a full cycle of studies in municipal schools. The award is a form of public recognition for the efforts of young citizens to get to know the local culture of the country, learn the language and integrate in the school and communal life. The new award aims to strengthen the sense of belonging, citizen participation and social cohesion in Rubano.
To organize the event, RISCC collaborated with many representatives of associations working in the field of migration and integration. They also discussed in public their experience in making policies for better integration of TCNs and spreading awareness campaigns.
Sofia Municipality presented to the media its renewed online health platform on October 11, 2019. The platform https://myhealth.bg/en connects all municipal hospitals, centres for health diagnostics and consultations, laboratories, dentists, and allows users to schedule a medical exam, check out health institutions and doctors, check out what he/she is entitle to as a patient, what procedures are covered by National Healthcare Service, what vaccinations are due and other useful functionalities. For about a month now the platform is fully accessible in English as well, and so far out of the slightly over 20,000 registered users 2% are foreigners.
The broadening of functionalities and the English language access are of significant help to TCN in Sofia and will facilitate their access to health care and protection of their rights. We are proud that the INTEGRA project contributed to this important development!
