Nearly €1.8 million will be allocated under the EEA Civil Society Fund in Bulgaria to support civic initiatives that contribute to strengthening information integrity and media literacy. This was announced by Georgi Stoytchev, Executive Director of the Open Society Institute – Sofia, during the National Forum “Media Literacy in Regional Communities”, organised by the Media Literacy Coalition in partnership with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and the Global Libraries Foundation – Bulgaria.
The forum brought together representatives of libraries, community cultural centres (chitalishta), schools, civil society organisations, institutions and the academic community to discuss how good local initiatives can receive more sustainable support and reach more people.
“There are many civic initiatives promoting media literacy, but they operate in an environment where sustainable public policies on media literacy, backed by the necessary resources, are lacking,” Georgi Stoytchev commented during the forum. He noted that Bulgaria consistently ranks last in the Media Literacy Index due to low levels of trust between people and in institutions, challenges to media freedom, and deficits in functional literacy. Stoytchev stressed that media literacy cannot be viewed in isolation from functional literacy, which depends on how the education system operates.
He noted that, depending on the context, civil society organisations can help create the conditions for positive changes in public policy, partially compensate for the absence of such policies, or seek to limit the damage caused by policies that have a negative impact on the environment.
During the forum, Georgi Stoytchev presented the funding opportunities available for civic initiatives supporting information integrity and media literacy under the EEA Civil Society Fund in Bulgaria. The Programme has a total budget of more than €23 million, of which nearly €1.8 million has been specifically allocated for strengthening information integrity and media literacy. It was launched in the spring of 2026 and will continue until the beginning of 2032.
Funding under the Programme is provided by the donor countries Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein within the framework of the EEA Financial Mechanism and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism. Seven calls for project proposals will be published under the Programme, two of which have already been launched. The Fund Operator is the Open Society Institute – Sofia, in partnership with the Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation, the Trust for Social Achievement and Civil Society Norway.
More information about the calls and opportunities to support initiatives aimed at strengthening information integrity and media literacy withing the Programme is available here (in Bulgarian).
