The Next Mile of the European Civil Society Infrastructure

The European Roma Information Office (ERIO) is a participating member of the project The Next Mile of the European Civil Society Infrastructure, coordinated by the Open Society Institute in Bulgaria. The aim of the project is to strengthen the role of the third sector in Bulgaria and Romania in improving the social environment by utilising the institutional capacities of Civil Society organizations (CSOs) and stimulating new forms of cooperation.

The specific objectives of the project are to ensure equal treatment and maintain the human dignity of the target communities with which Bulgarian and Romanian CSOs work, and to widen (within Bulgaria and Romania) the influence of best practices used by EU-CSOs and CSOs networks. The project has two target groups: the first comprises CSOs active in the social sphere (service providers, advocacy, research and resource centres working for the interest of vulnerable groups, policy-makers, etc.), and the second group consists of different categories of vulnerable groups (minorities, disabled persons, children and young people with specific social problems). Project activities will then cover CSOs that provide services to Roma and other vulnerable groups in which Roma are overrepresented.

ERIO is contributing to the elaboration of methodological and information material in this field. The objective of this activity is to gather information on European social policy networks and their methods of operation at the European, national and local levels in EU Member States, thus developing a major methodological tool that will be useful in the work of NGO service providers in Bulgaria and Romania and help them to access other European networks.

Click here to access the Next Mile web-site.