At the beginning of the month a team of specialists in reintegration of offenders went on a training visit in Germany under Module 3 of the Programme for adopting the model HSI – part of Project “Bulgarian-German platform for innovative policies and decisions in the social inclusion of offenders”. The project has been implemented by Association “Training and service centre” in partnership with the German organization xit GmbH and Crime Prevention Fund – IGA. Its main aim is to improve the quality of life of the people in Bulgaria by creating a platform for mutual projects enhancing the social inclusion of offenders. The adoption of the model and the platform includes a series of activities related to training, exchange of experience, and professional practice.

The programme for adopting the model HSI includes 4 main modules and the training visit in Germany is part of the third module. Within the framework of this activity 10 of the participants in the trainings went to Germany (the Province of Brandenburg) to get introduced to the module. Their programme included a visit to a prison in Brandenburg and to offices of partners from the HSI network, getting introduced to the nature of the social ambulant qualification courses of young offenders, a presentation for the Consultative centre of HSI network, which has been managed by “Humanitas”, a visit to one of the partners of HSI network in the city of Perleberg, which works under one of the pillars – “Work instead of prison”, a discussion of the results from the work of all partners of HSI network from the other pillar – “Training courses for young offenders”, getting introduced to the scheme of evaluating the work of the network, a presentation for the mutual activities between the prosecutor’s office, the probation office, the NGO sector and others.

In the next stage of the work under the project the participants of the training visit will work as executive specialists for several months. They will establish training practice under Module 4 of the Programme for adopting the model HSI by applying different elements from the work with offenders. In this way they will test in practice the adopted variant of the model HSI.