Ekoobshtnost (Eco Society), or the Environmental Partnership Foundation, is one of the very few Bulgarian organisations financing not only environmental but also social programmes of other organisations, local initiative groups and community centres in small Bulgarian settlements.

The manager of the foundation is Lubomira Kolcheva, who has held the position since the birth of the organisation in 2004.

She started her career with another non-profit organisation, the Foundation for Local Government Reform (FLGR), but in the past three years has felt herself to be more closely connected to dealing with environmental problems.

“I started working at FLGR immediately after I finished my studies at the Central European University in Warsaw, and I was lucky to find this job immediately after I came back from Poland,” she says.

Kolcheva describes the five years she spent with FLGR as very interesting and as a time of progress.

“The many meetings I had with people from the whole country opened me a lot towards people’s problems differences in various places and various communities.”

Like Ekoobshtnost, FLGR supported comparatively small projects by non-governmental organisations and local initiative groups seeking solutions to specific problems.
Kolcheva makes clear that she was not working solely with environmental problems.

“Sometimes there are communication problems between citizens and local authorities. The locals try to substantially change the way that their local systems work, so that they are more flexible and open, and in order to do their job, as well as to provide sufficiently good services and access to information,” she says.

The five years she worked at FLGR were “a good period for one person to gain sufficient experience and skills”.

“When I learned that there was a vacancy to be director of the future organisation Ekoobshtnost, I applied and had the good fortune to be chosen. This is my first position as a manager, before that I was only leader of a team.”

The organisation
Ekoobshtnost is a partner to five other bodies from Central and Eastern Europe, in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania.

“We were the last organisation that entered the Environmental Partnership family, as we call it. When we joined, the Environmental Partnership consortium was 14 years old. The first member organisations were from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. They started as developments of programmes of the German Marshall Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Steward Mott Foundation. The Romanian organisation was set up three years before ours,” Kolcheva says.

Prior to opening its office in Bulgaria, there was an “investigation mission” by the partners and the donors. They met representatives of other Bulgarian environmental organisations, businesses and media, as well as government organisations. After this, they assessed the need for a new organisation to support ecological initiatives and community development. The consortium decided that the best for Bulgaria would be to create a new organisation, and so Ekoobshtnost was established.

“In the beginning, I was in a bit tense in my expectations about how this organisation would be received, because in 2003 it was one of the 4000 to 5000 registered non-government organisations in the country, even though not all of them were actually functioning,” Kolcheva says.

“Because of the quite well established NGO infrastructure and the long history of various donation programmes in the environmental field, the advent of a new organisation was a serious challenge, depending on how it is positioned, where it locates itself and how is it accepted by the NGO sector and the other players in the partnership between organisations and local authorities,” she says.

Now, already three and a half years on the “market”, Ekoobshtnost produces financing programmes in accordance with the identified needs of the regions, called small grants programmes. The background to this is that the organisation’s donors are community-orientated.

“After we announce a national or regional programme, open to all non-profit organisations in the country, and after they outline their motivations for their proposals and the problem they want to deal with, they submit their projects to Ekoobshtnost. We have a commission, the membership of which varies according to the theme (for example, ranging from biodiversity, refuse to eco-tourism and waters).”

After an organisation files an application to Ekoobshtnost, it goes to the assessment commission. After a discussion by the commission, a recommendation is made to the board of trustees. “The board of trustees is the final body that approves the projects,” Kolcheva says.

“Our board of trustees currently has seven members. Our consortium transformed into a separate organisation that unites us.”

The Environmental Partnership for Sustainable Development Association is registered in Brno, Czech Republic.

For the sake of continuity, it is policy that each board of trustees includes a representative of one of the other organisations in the consortium.

The current Ekoobshtnost trustees include the director of the Czech organisation, Miroslav Kundrata. He assists the Bulgarian organisation to obtain ideas from the Czech experience and in getting various exchanges and expansion of programmes to come to Bulgaria.

The programmes
The organisations in the consortium have some programmes in common.

“For example, Green Ways is one of the programmes on which all the organisations work. At the annual general meetings, we usually discuss the possibilities for joint development,” Kolcheva says.

Because of the geographical separation of the Bulgarian and Romanian organisations, there are currently no joint Green Ways between the two neighbouring countries.

“However, with the Polish, Czech ad Slovak colleagues, this is possible and they have them. There are the Central European Green Ways, which are much longer segments of about 240km,” Kolcheva says.

Green Ways are natural paths, not green corridors in the meaning of biodiversity corridors.

“These paths allow much healthier movement of people – walking, by bicycle or motor bikes, as the Green Ways concept is calm, pleasant communication between people and nature, without of course doing any kind of harm,” she says. Kolcheva specifies that this excludes the use of cars.

The idea of Green Ways is also to connect different communities, while providing opportunities for development of the local community.

“It can be arranged between small towns or villages, or local craftsmen could set up one for themselves, because tourists visiting the area can be their natural clients, which creates a livelihood for them,” Kolcheva says.

“In other words, the idea is a nice co-existence between community development and trade (including local mehanas, taverns, restaurants) and visitors, as this does not overload and exhaust the capacity of the resources in the area,” she says.

“In Bulgaria we currently are working on Green Ways in the lower Danube part between the towns of Oryahovo and Kozloduy. In principle this region is not well developed but has good potential. The infrastructure is also not well developed and good infrastructure is needed for people to be able to reach the gateway to the Green Way,” Kolcheva says.

Unfortunately, municipalities in the area lack good economic development opportunities, which is why tourism there is only just starting to develop.

“In this region there are people with initiative, which is always a necessary and basic condition for something to happen. For example, now in the village of Sofronievo we are supporting a small project, a house-workshop where visitors can do weaving. In this way, visitors can become acquainted with how our forebears earned a livelihood, and learn some personal skills in this very picturesque and vivid village, which is near the town of Miziya in north-western Bulgaria,” Kolcheva says.

In Dolni Vadin, the organisation also found many “initiative people” from the community centre and the municipality.

“Now they are setting up a Fishing House, which with a bit of help will be restored and become something like a museum. Visitors to the Danube river regions will go to this lovely village, where many traditions and celebrations are preserved, the local old women sing wonderfully and make awesome dishes,” Kolcheva says. Together with that, tourists will see the ways of a fishing community.

“These are small parts of the whole because we are just at the beginning stage,” she says.

This year, Ekoobshtnost also worked on a Coca-Cola initiative called Green Danube. It is held annually under the International Committee for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR).

“This year the motto was ‘the Danube’s strength in our traditions’ and we did a tour celebrating local traditions in the various places. It was organised with the participation of the local community centres and we could observe dynamic communities: the people went out, showed the traditions, including local dishes. In practice, what happened during programme could later be integrated in our other programme for the Green Ways. In this way we are trying to optimise the connection between the problems,” Kolcheva says.

The team
“The interesting thing in our foundation is that as the years passed, we found out that the people who work here are very similar people and the basic thing that unites us is indeed moral values,” Kolcheva says.

They also have in common their approach to work and towards people from various communities, and their colleagues from the environmental sector, an attitude that is very open, and an attitude of respect and regard for others’ opinion.

“When I was recruiting people, I was looking for really special and worthwhile attitude to ecological problems and the environment. For me, another important thing was my employees’ experience in working with people from different societies because in many cases we go to places to discuss with people what should happen. I was looking for open and communicative people who are not of the technocratic and bureaucratic type, and who have human sensitivity towards problems and are able to empathise and to give feedback,” Kolcheva says.

Part of the organisation’s work is in the office and part of it outside, among people and nature.

“Lately I feel I have more work in the office and I cannot travel enough, which is very important to me because it keeps a person balanced and aware of what is happening.

Otherwise, there is the risk that if we only get information on the phone, we will not get the real picture, and the information about problems remains on paper. Therefore when I feel this way, I start thinking how I can get out there, when time allows and when I do not have many management responsibilities.”

Six people work at the foundation, and sometimes they go on retreats together. “We separate from the usual environment and do something like team building, during which we do strategic planning, decide tasks among ourselves and we, so to say, ‘synchronise our clocks’ to see where we have communication gaps,” Kolcheva says.

The colleagues have equal rights, capacity and tasks, according to Kolcheva, so teams form naturally.

“My favourite time in my job is when we can do these retreats and team planning, when we gather, go out of the office and can slow down,” she says. “The moments when we are together with the colleagues, we plan together, and also cook and test some things together, are my favourite.”

Partnership
Ekoobshtnost so far finances only non-governmental organisations, initiative groups and sometimes local communities.

“In small settlements, the connection between the municipality and the community centre is very strong and they work together in organising activities and initiatives. In fact, if the municipality has not allowed some destructive investor into the region to build something that is environmentally unfriendly, then we can co-operate,” Kolcheva says.

Ekoobshtnost works on projects and writes projects to gain finance.

“When we started, we had committed finance for three years from the Charles Steward Mott Foundation, German Marshall Fund and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Before these three years ended, we started to develop new projects and look for other options for financing,” Kolcheva says.

Currently, the Charles Steward Mott Foundation finances community development initiatives on the principle of sustainability through local partnership. Another Ekoobshtnost donor is the Luxembourg environment ministry, already in its fourth year of financing a program on energy. “Through them, we finance sustainable energy efficiency projects, which popularise renewable energy sources. Many social projects were already carried out within this framework of this programme, and in Montana, Dimitrovgrad and Gabrovo solar panels were installed at kindergartens and childrens’ welfare homes,” Kolcheva says.

The Austrian environment ministry is financing another programme on supporting anti-nuclear initiatives and renewable energy sources. The Frankfurter Zoologist Association and the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt DBU are supporting for a fourth year a programme called Preserving of the Vultures in Bulgaria. The Balkan Vulture Action Plan is a Balkan initiative to stabilise the vulture population in the countries involved, and rehabilitation of the species. In Bulgaria live three of the four breeds of Balkan vultures. Five local organisations get finance from this programme.

“We are also looking of long-term donors and now we are working on a strategy to form an endowment fund, of the type popular in US. This is a fund collected by testaments of environmentalists, citizens or companies. The US has a law governing the management of such funds. It has to be maintained because this ensures sustainability and only the income from it can be used for initiatives. We want to start such a donor initiative, to help us to collect such a reserve, or endowment fund. The difficulty in Bulgaria is that these things are not popular and tend to donate to things where they can see immediate results,” Kolcheva says.

Personal development
Asked who are her teachers in life, Kolcheva says, “I gained the most experience at FLGR, where I initially worked; I learned a lot from my then-boss Ginka Kapitanova.

When I entered the Environmental Partnership consortium, I learned and I keep on learning from our Czech colleague Kundrata. The Slovak organisation also is very strong for me and I like them very much.”

She studied business management at Sofia University and she obtained a master’s in sociology and politics in Warsaw. Asked why she did not stay in Poland after she studied there, she says that life showed her that real needs can be satisfied in Bulgaria.

“It is very nice here and here is the place to live,” she says. “I have many friends in Europe and in the States, I sometimes visit them, but at the end of the day I come back here,” she says.

Asked how she combines work with personal life, Kolcheva admits that for the moment she is trying to improve the balance, because all her friends and relatives are criticising her for sacrificing free time to work.

“As long as my work is interesting and valuable for me, I am trying to make use of the meetings and places I visit, to know the places and later these places become my favourites to visit in my free time. For me, work is not something unpleasant and from working contacts I find things for my personal life,” she says.

She naturally likes very much to be in the nature during her free time, in parks when in Sofia. Travelling and sightseeing are also among her hobbies.

“I also have a bike that I want to ride but I am a bit afraid to do so in Sofia because for me cycling in Sofia is a nightmare,” she says.

Being from northern city of Pleven, she loves to go there because, she says, it is a very calm place. “We have a very nice park – Kayluka, where everybody likes to spend free time. The city is not as over-constructed as Sofia, sometimes in the evening you can open the window and listen to the birds, which is a big city romantic,” she says laughing. She spends all holidays there, together with her family because she is a “big traditionalist”.

“I have two favourite nephews who are also very ecological. I once tried to explain to the five-year-old about separate refuse collection. I could not understand why I had no success, but two months later he brought me a magazine, at the back of which was painted a labyrinth with different types of refuse on top, and they were going to the different types of refuse containers. This was a better lesson for him. He also does not like to see people throwing their refuse on the street, which is promising for the future generation,” she says.

Kolcheva says that currently there are about 40 active environmental NGOs in Bulgaria, as it is difficult to make a sharp distinction among the solely environmental organisations.

“The reason, on one hand, is that ecological themes are not always at the foreground, but there are serious problems, such as ideas to build mini hydro power plants (that dry up or flood regions, and affect biodiversity), illegal tree felling or something else connected to gold mining,” she says. Activities in these directions are developed mostly as part of the organisations’ educational awareness-raising programme and programmes connected to society, and within these activities the organisations do many social events, such as working with children or problematic groups or with volunteers.

Kolcheva says that most of Bulgaria’s solely ecological organisations are in Sofia. “There are several active organisations in Varna, Svishtov and Plovdiv and in regions with clear environmental problems (such as Stara Zagora for example).”

In 2006, Ekoobshtnost did a survey on trends in Bulgarians’ donations for ecological issues. “The truth is that the social theme is closer to our fellow countrymen’s hearts, probably similarly to other people throughout the world, and for me this is very sad because only six per cent of those polled said that they would donate to ecological causes, even though there are many problems here,” she says.

“For me this is a problem and a challenge to all organisations. The attitude of elderly Bulgarians is not to go out on the streets when there is an ecological demonstration even if they support the idea. The reason can be the people’s skepticism that something could be changed, lack of trust that the system can be changed by a civil initiative, or there is apathy because of disillusionment with what is happening at government level. I think people should be more open and brave about such radical issues.”