About BGP

1. The Goal

The Balkan Girl Power (BGP) project provide opportunities for girls from five Western Balkan countries – Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia – to get to know each other and develop, through photography, a shared vision of their country’s and the Western Balkans societies where women and girls play an active role, along men and boys, in their countries’ progress towards EU integration. SCI and its four partner organizations work with girls in the five countries to:

(1) enhance the visibility of girls’ perspectives and thoughts about their country’s and Western Balkans future in the EU;

(2) establish an informal network of at least 100 girls from five Western Balkan countries that share understanding, perspectives, and dreams about their country’s and the Western Balkans future in EU;

(3) equip the girls with creative skills and tools to critically think about their role in the society and in shaping the future of their country and the Western Balkan region.

2. Implementing partners

The project is implemented by the Social Contract Institute (SCI) in Albania and four partner organizations: the Centre Artpolis – Art and Community from Kosovo; the National Youth Council of Macedonia (NYCM) in Macedonia; the NGO iACT in Montenegro; and the Organization for Promoting Activism (OPA) in Serbia.

3. Activities:

SSCI and the other four implementing partners are selecting girls (aged 16 to 26) interested in exploring their perspectives on EU integration through photography and in interacting with girls from other countries to share ideas, dreams, and perspectives about their own future and that of their country and their immediate region (Western Balkans). The BGP Project will:

  • Train girls on how to use photography to document and express their perspective on a future within the EU for themselves, their country, and the Western Balkans;
  • Develop the “Balkan Girl Power” platform where girls will post their photographs and interact with each-other; set up and facilitate discussion among girls also through a Balkan Girl Power Facebook page;
  • Provide long distance mentoring to the girls them by the prominent UK-based photographer Lala Meredith Vula regarding their entries to the “Balkan Girl Power” platform;
  • Select best photographs and display them in the Balkan Girl Power Exhibition to be organized in Tirana, Albania; award prizes for the best works at the exhibition;
  • Organize peer-to-peer discussion on “Being a girl in Western Balkans” and a master class by Lala Meredith Vula with the girls from the five countries that will be present at the exhibition; and
  • Prepare the design of “Balkan Girl Power” 2019 Calendar to be printed by each of the implementing partners pending fundraising by private sector sources in each country.