MGERB held a Winter University for the first time

21/12/09

MGERB continues the tradition to organise educational seminars for its members. The autumn modules of MGERB’s Third Political Academy were closely followed by MGERB’s Winter University. Before the end of the successful 2009, over 70 members of MGERB from all over Bulgaria gathered in Borovets from the 18th to the 19th of December and participated in MGERB’s First Winter University. The winter university was organised with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. This was a spectacular end of an incredibly active year for the Youth Organisation of GERB, which organised two Political Academies, a Summer University and a variety of training courses and seminars for its members. In this way they acquire ranging new skills, which can be helpful in their future professional development in the public sector, as well as the private.

The Winter University of MGERB was opened by Dr. Andreas von Below – Director of the Sofia office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Monika Panayotova – Chairwoman of MGERB and Member of Parliament in the 41st National Assembly. Dr. Andreas von Below, highlighted three main points in his opening speech – his impressions about Bulgaria since taking office and Bulgaria’s energy dependency from Russia, the elections for national government from the 5th of July, which allowed GERB to form a government dedicated to the European development of Bulgaria, which consists of young and active ministers and made a conclusion about all of the successful projects that the foundation has realised with MGERB, which have contributed to the fact that there are many young people in the executive and the legislative branch of government. He also expressed his support for the upcoming initiatives and seminars in 2010.

To support the fact that one of GERB’s main priorities is to invest in the young many young members of parliament, parliament secretaries and representatives of the executive government from GERB took part in the Winter University. One of the main priorities of the university concerned the development of youth policies in Bulgaria, where Mrs. Svetlana Lomeva – Deputy Minister of Education, Youth and Science regarding youth policies, discussed the topic with the participants. After the second day the participants handed their suggestions for the development of the youth sector and were informed about the completed work in the sphere in the first 100 days of the new government for the European development of Bulgaria. The European aspect of the seminar was given by the MEP’s from GERB – Illiana Ivanova and Vladimir Urutchev who represented the work done by MEP’s. They also familiarised the participants about the hardships of the Lisbon Treaty, the development of the European energy policy and the Bulgarian energy projects, as well as the results from the summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. There was special interest in the upcoming opportunity in which representatives of MGERB can work for the European Institutions from 2010. The Balkan aspect of the seminar was presented by Radoslav Tochev – Councillor to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria regarding foreign policy. The national aspect of the seminar, regarding reforms was presented by Vladislav Goranov – Deputy Minister of Finance.
Another important aspect of the seminar was dedicated to team work and leadership, where Mrs. Iren Sokolova – Member of Parliament in the 41st National Assembly and expert in social psychology, lead the discussions. During an interactive session the participants had to form a National Youth Council of Bulgaria. They were divided into groups and had the opportunity to decide how to achieve this and later write down, how they formed their groups, what role did they play in their group and their impressions, weather they managed to fulfill their ideas and the overall performance of the group as a whole.

As a final the administrative secretary of the party Mr. Cvetomir Paunov presented to the participants the priorities and the hardships of the future development of the project GERB.

The alumni of MGERB’s Winter University strengthened the link between lecturers and organisers and participants by giving excellent remarks about the organisation, the excellent efficiency and the successful combination of lecturers and training modules. They expressed strong hope to participate in MGERB’s upcoming training seminars in 2010!