EQ publications
Creating a Centre of Excellence
The international network known as COPORE (Competencies for Poverty Reduction) was coordinating a large project involving 14 partners. In February 2010 a competition for European organizations actually working in the field of poverty reduction was held under the banner of COPORE. David Bisset prepared an article to present Equilibrium's 'modus operandi', difficulties and achievements in the delivery of integrated social services based on our experience in managing the Ruse Complex for Social services.
The COPORE team chose nine different organizations - EQ was happy to be among that number - that attended an international conference in Amsterdam to present a variety of models of best professional practice. You can read the article in question here.
Experiential Education
This manual has been designed for use by teachers / youth workers who are concerned to adopt informal, interactive teaching methods that introduce children to ‘experiential learning’.
Experiential Learning basically means learning from physical engagement and a process of exploration rather than from instruction. The Equilibrium team believes that it is important that, as far as possible, this takes place within the community that surrounds the school that the children attend. Participation in civic society permits children to positively contribute to cultural life and social development as they learn.
We also encourage exploration of the natural world so that children become ecologically aware and conservation conscious on the basis of their own experience of the issues as opposed to learning these things from educational formulae or the manifestos of environmental organisations.
Sexual Politics among Bulgarian Teenagers
Bulgaria’s criminal ‘insurance’ rackets of the early 1990s have been dismantled but the Neanderthal bortsi, the hired muscle, remain influential and ubiquitous.They are widely emulated and, as a social group, they represent a highly demonstrative clan among the well to do within urban society. Their offspring strut their stuff in the corridors of the elite schools. Disembarking from upmarket, foreign cars (characteristically, jet black or crimson) at 8.15, they enter school, mobile phone glued to ear, intent on making a fashion statement sufficient to knock the socks off any US pop idol. They are frequently disdainful of their classmates and teachers. The average teacher hasn’t the skill or the courage to curb their brashness. What can the school directors do? Threaten expulsion?