Yuliana Nascova is currently the team lead for Employment and Entrepreneurship in the Trust for Social Achievement Foundation and has an extensive experience before that in the NGO sector in various areas, including art and culture, cinema, as well as in other social sectors, such as early childhood development.
She believes that it is essential to be acquainted with advocacy, in order to move forward and enable individuals, groups and people in power alike to find common ground and solve problems in a civil manner. Advocacy promotes problem solving and participation – essential issues for her direct work with Roma youth vulnerable group.
Read more about her takeaways in her story below:
Personal impressions
My personal story from the training program that significantly shifted or changed my perspective about advocacy was during a lecture given by BESCO – The Business case in Bulgarian advocacy that aimed to provide clear-cut, useful and specific tools and case studies related to advocacy, operations, governance and sustainability.
During this long, super interesting and detailed presentation by Ned and Dobri, backed up with extremely accurate, well-reasoned, practical and well elaborated examples and explanations, I realized how important it is for an organization to have good, aligned governance and stable, like-minded and effective governing bodies to support, when needed, the organization’s efforts and strategies for change in laws and overall business / other environment.
I also realized how time-consuming, difficult, and long it is to bring about change through advocacy campaigns in the entrepreneurship ecosystem that will lead to a better economic climate, policies, and country profile that make it easier for employers, small, medium, and large companies, and investors. I was impressed by their examples and sharing of know-how on how to create a sustainable business model, various tools for effective operations and best practices and case studies of leverage.
I have also come to realize that to achieve change and to operate in a hostile environment that often misunderstands the importance of policy change takes a lot of patience, full commitment, flexibility, leadership, a good strategy to sell, and a lot of very good alliances.
Takeaways
At this stage I do not have a specific, clear-cut plan how exactly I am going to apply the skills and knowledge. I am considering the application of what I have learned to campaign for a change in attitudes about the economic sustainability of people from vulnerable groups, as well as specific advocacy for a change in the regulatory framework on the labor market and employment of these groups after studying existing models and regulations in the country, and good examples, practices and initiatives, as well as working models in Europe.
Impact
In what ways do you think this program would contribute to positive change in Bulgaria?
- Through the opportunities that are given to people from the business circles, the non-governmental sector and the state administration, who have a certain power, to have the opportunity to join such a program.
- Through the know-how, tools, knowledge, practical advice and concrete case studies provided to them within this Academy, to better understand the different aspects and significance of lobbying and advocacy, in order to be able to apply what they have learned during the planning of individual campaigns.
- Through the synergy created, networking in ongoing process and possible alliances built around identified areas of collaboration, overlapping interests and causes, policies in need to be changed.
- Through trained professionals who are an inspiring example to other agents in the ecosystem trying to effect change where needed.
Highlights
Frankly speaking opportunities for informal networking and collaboration within the program were not that much due to strict timing of the schedule, little time for break when informal networking with other professionals could be opted for, and few informal events.
I hope that through our coming together in a union or other kind of association, we will have the opportunity to get united around a commonly identified cause and try to build strong alliances and an advocacy strategy that will get us where we want to go, with the right people and the right approach.
Piece of advice
My aspirations are to continue to build on what has been learned and put it into practice by preserving the achieved synergy of the group, unifying the professionalism of the participants and their expertise in the different areas of work, identifying an area for change and building a strategy and advocacy campaign for its change.
My advice for future participants of the Advocacy Academy would be to be open, persistent, take as much knowledge as possible, be proactive in discussing and asking questions, seek to reward what is heard and learned and think in the direction of how, with the help of the tools from the academy, to improve the environment in which live and work. Also, to continuously monitor the environment to identify opportunities to build strong alliances with potential supporters for effective advocacy targeted at the appropriate stakeholders.
I would recommend the program mainly to professionals in non-governmental/civic sector whose work and efforts have been concentrated to change policies, regulations, attitudes and beliefs, in the field of overcoming poverty, working with vulnerable communities, improving the condition of marginalised groups in the country, advocating for the resolution of hot issues related to early childhood development, access to medicines, nutrition, to quality health care, access to the labor market, fair pay, and other current significant social issues and challenges.
