NC FUTURE NOW

Narodno Chitalishte “Future now” was established in August 2006, as a non-for-profit, non- government civic organisation and culture centre. Now it is a modern and stable organization, centre of unconventional thinking, aiming the general benefit of the local community and all youth . Future Now works for developing of long life learning, social, critical thinking and personal skills and thus encourages community to work for its flourish and prosperity. Future Now empowers young people to build up responsible attitude to the nature and sustainable development of the civil society on the place where they live.

Resources

Staff

More than 50 members of chitalishte.

Among them:

1 chairman on full time

1 program manager -full time

2 program manager - part time

1 full time volunteer from Peace Corp

More than 30 trained instructors for informal and non-formal ecological education

Part of the chitalishte members are psychologists, educational specialists, experts on e- learning, computer specialists, designers, architects, culture developers, scients teachers, phd students and other who are ready to participate in development and implementation of our projects.

We work with different organisations and individuals in recruiting volunteers. As a part of this initiative since October 2007 our team was joined by a volunteer from the American Peace Corp who still working with us.

For the period of our existence we managed to participate as an associate partner in the development of the "Free of charge help for popularizing activities aimed at environmental protection and sustainable development in the border area between the Republic of and the Republic of Greece” projectin 2007 and 2008.

Future Now compelted „Raising the ecological culture and civic awareness about the environmental problems among children and youth, as a mechanism for solving the ecological problems of the upper stream region of Arda river” project, financed by „EcoObshtnost“ foundation, completed in mid June, 2007. As a part of this project we successfully developed and tested a methodology for organizing and managing ECOACADEMIES for children.

About 100 children from , and Arda took part in the organized NATURE festival. Children from about 10 schools from the region were involved in the project.

In 2008 and 2009 we work under the project "Nature massangers" fundet by Eropean Social Fund and bulgarian government. For one year we work with more than 400 kids in environmental clubs, events, competitions, study trips and ecocamps in Rhodopi, Rila and Stara planina mountains. During the project we created a new web-site (www.zelen.bg) with the main goal to rise peoples understanding of the situation with Bulgarian nature, and increase the personal responsibility for the ecological problems in Bulgaria of every citizen. All visitors of the web-site www.zelen.bg are invited to create their own pledge to the nature. They have possibility to choose between several given opportunities or to create their own pledge.

In the march 2008 we start the project "What is to be a citizen of Bulgaria" to February 2010. During this project we establish platform for civic education, clubs in schools, events and competitions in the civic participation field.

In 2009 we start project: "Future friendly - thurd generation of human rights - a new generation of citizents". For one year we will make sociological research, workshops and conference for ypung people in Bulgaria with ideas for emproving the live in Bulgaria. New generation of human rights, comunity rights and cultural heritage based on ethnical groups and diversity will be popularized around the country.

A website of the chitalishte (www.gudevica.org) was developed and now it not only presents our organization, but also gives place for critical discussion on important topics especially in the field of ecology.

NC "Future now" is part of chitalishta organization - culture centers around Bulgaria where local people can popularize the traditions, culture monuments and other activities. We work for our region to popularize the culture and monuments, great folclore songs of Rhodopi mountains and Valya Balkanska - her song is in the space now. In the area of rhodopi mountains we work to rebuild our center and develop a new culture and education center for ypung people and guests of the region. Our old building is the perfect place to learn for old culture of the mountain, old building technics and new technologies for sustainable leaving.

NC “Future now” is involved in the "Rural Network and LEADER" project, which is a partner initiative between the Government of Republic of Bulgaria, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, the UNDP and the Foundation for Local Government Reform, where our team was part of workshops, seminars and trainings for sustainable local development, tourism development and ecological agriculture.

In 2008 members of our team were part of the Sustainable Tourism Working Group (STWG, since 2004, in cooperation with CEEweb for Biodivercity). These are series of working group meetings and workshops on sustainable tourism, tourism potential analysis, sustainable tourism product development, tourism impact assessment and management, stakeholder and business involvement.