General Purposes

About this grant

Creating Effective Grassroots Alternatives provides capacity-building support to local initiatives working for community change in Bulgaria. It focuses on marginalized and ethnically diverse communities, particularly the Roma, and the capacity and ability of these communities to access local, national and European development resources.This grant will support efforts to build the capacity of community groups to mobilize local resources, promote community leadership and engage in income-generation projects; encourage networking among Roma and non-Roma groups working to access development resources and promote youth leadership; and raise awareness about the importance of inclusive public participation in decisionmaking at the community level. Recent accomplishments included building the capacity of more than 90 Roma groups involved in local and national activities; launching access-to-education programs in four localities in Bulgaria that benefited more than 46,000 Roma children; piloting income-generating programs for six Roma communities in rural areas; publishing case studies, documentaries and research papers to increase public awareness about Roma issues; and sharing experiences as a member of both the Central and Eastern European (CEE) Citizens Network and the Community Development in CEE Network.