The Observatory's Projects
PATHFINDER (2025)
The X project addresses youth unemployment in the EU by fostering a critical dialogue on the dual nature of
artificial intelligence (AI) as both a challenge and an opportunity. By organising debates, workshops, and youth
knowledge exchanges, the project will explore whether AI is a curse or a blessing for young people while
advocating for policies that bridge education gaps and prepare youth for the future of work. The project will
empower young people to engage with AI-related issues and actively influence EU policy agendas through exposure
to AI ecosystems, targeted training programs, and policy advocacy.
LISTEN (2024)
We are thrilled to announce that Observatory has joined the new European project LISTEN, Learning and Inclusion for Sustainable Community Engagement.
The consortium includes organizations from Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, and Portugal, as well as local partners. We are very pleased that the Municipality of Topolovgrad is our local partner.
The project's goal is to enhance the programming of small and local community organizations by incorporating trust, dialogue, and creativity, thus strengthening democratic participation and involving citizens and communities in the consultation, design, and implementation of tailored activities, solidarity actions, and social services that address their genuine needs. The project will specifically target individuals at high risk of social exclusion, as well as their associated groups, organizations, and movements. The primary focus is on involving civil society actors in active consultation and co-designing activities that address real needs. We will also engage citizens through workshops, training sessions, art-based interventions, and innovative learning-by-doing approaches.
ValuesML (2023)
The Values Machine Learning Project (2023) is managed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service. The Joint Research Centre's mission is to provide EU policies with independent, evidence-based, scientific and technical support throughout the entire policy cycle.
The main goal of the project is to establish a gold standard to train and evaluate a machine learning model that would detect references to values as codified the Personal Values theory of Schwartz (1992), in (at least) 24 EU Official Languages. The aim is to achieve this through values text-mining, media-monitoring, and a machine learning algorithm. Values researchers divided into several national teams, based on their language of origin, independently rate sample texts for “values content.” The working text corpus includes party manifestos and news articles from mainstream and unverified sources (Europe Media Monitor). The goal for the corpus, when annotated, is to be balanced and consistent across various languages (Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Turkish), to have a homogenous distribution among values, as well as broad coverage of topics and time periods.
Bulgarian ValuesML team:
Anna Krasteva, Language Leader
Evelina Staikova, Curator
Emilia Zankina, Curator
Roberta Koleva, Coordinator and Annotator
Vanina Ninova, Annotator
Chaya Koleva, Annotator
Mina Hristova, Annotator
IN2PREV (2023)
Po Policy and Citizens’ Observatory is member of IN2PREV
Law enforcement and community cooperation and training approach to prevent radicalization by ensuring refugees’ successful inclusion
Frontline Practitioners Network. Transnational European Partnership to improve refugee integration.
The IN2PREV project aims to enhance LEAs and NGOs’ skills regarding working with refugees and asylum seekers in European host and transit countries to successfully integrate these individuals and prevent their radicalisation.
By providing adequate training, a reliable screening tool, and a mentoring approach for refugees and asylum seekers, LEAs and NGOs’ professionals will receive adequate and tailored guidance on conducting vulnerability risk assessments and facilitating these individuals’ integration.
Project website: https://www.in2prev.eu/
‘Empowerment of young migrants and refugees through innovative practices for more inclusive (post)pandemic, (post) crisis Bulgaria’ (2021-2022)
Funded by:
&
The Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation
Leader: Chaya Koleva
Coordinator: Vanina Ninova
Participants: Anna Krasteva, Annie Raykov, Chris Dinev, Tzvetelina Naydenova, Radoslav Iliev
Active European Citizens against Hate Speech (2020-2022)
Co-Funded by the Europe for Citizens Program of the European Union.
Coordinator - Latvian Human Rights Centre
Anna Krasteva – Principal Investigator