The Center for Independent Living starts a new project, which will be implemented in partnership with the Department of Sociology of the Sofia University and is funded by the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe. The project will involve university students in various activities aimed at the promotion of the social model of disability.
The students will be engaged in critical analysis of policies and practices related to the day-to-day living of disabled people in Bulgaria – their inclusion in their natural communities of school or work, the local pub or the cinema… The results from the students’ work will be uploaded on the CIL website in the form of analyses and comments. An important part of the project consists of monthly meetings of the Disability Rights Workshop, where the students will have an opportunity to discuss their observations with CIL experts and other stakeholders.
Another activity of the project will be the development of two social and political analyses. In order to provoke the critical thinking of the issues under consideration, we will also translate into Bulgarian a number of interesting articles by prominent authors in the field of Disability Studies, such as Mike Oliver and Adolf Razka – well-known figures both in the sociology of disablement and in the European disability rights movement. Thus, we hope to contribute towards the enrichment of the existing literature in Bulgarian, which looks at disability from a social rather than from a medical perspective.