On 8 and 9 September, 2016, in Veliko Tarnovo, a meeting between representatives of the Secretariat of the National Network for the Children and experts from 10 NGOs, part of the Network, was held. On behalf of the Association BRTMI, our colleague Mariana Mineva participated in the meeting.

The meeting was the final step before launching the second phase of the project "School as Community center". It was an opportunity to reconcile long-term vision of the project, the specific objectives that are to be met in the period 2016-2018, as well as to ask ourselves,once again,what Community school means in the context of Bulgarian education.

In the discussion, many of the issues and concerns arising from the new Education Law and the role of NGOs and projects like "School as Community center" for dealing with them, were discussed. Participants agreed that in the new stage of the project, NNC with their experience and expertise, beside building a school community has a role to help schools with the following steps:

   ▪ providing assistance for faster adaptation to the new Education law;
   ▪ sharing good practices between schools and between NGOs and schools;
   ▪ proposing particular steps and tools for joint school leadership and increasing students’ self-governance and participation;
   ▪ promoting strong school communities and methods of building them.

The meeting ended with a shared desire to achieve a cohesive but "open" community accepting differences and foreign values.