In the period 12-16 October, 2018, Sofia organized open days in the frame of START NOW project, that took place in parallel in the three partner countries – Poland, Bulgaria and Cyprus within the framework of the European Health Promotion Initiative START NOW. On October 15 and 16, 2018 at the National Sports Academy “Vasil Levski”, all those interested were able to get acquainted with the developed training modules that youth and sports professionals can apply to work with young people and with the online training available for youth workers.
As a result of the activities under this initiative, Non-formal Education Centers (NEC) was set up to be run by the partner organizations. An interactive international youth information portal has also been set up which also focuses on the training of youth workers in the field of health and prevention available online.
An online platform was presented, where all training modules developed within the project are available. An extensive publication on How to Promote Health among Young People through Informal Methods was developed within the project to help youth workers and sports professionals familiarize young people with topics that concern their health.
According to the 2017 edition of the Global Health Index, Bulgarians are ranked 68th in health in the world. Although outside the top 50 places, Bulgaria moved five positions ahead. In the 2016 rating, for example, she was 73, while a slight improvement; urgent measures are still urgently needed to improve the health status of the Bulgarians.