Tretí sektor v postkomunistickom Bulharsku a jeho podpora mladým ľuďom na trhu práce
Third Sector in Post-Communist Bulgaria. And Its Support for Young People in the Labour Market

Summary/Abstract: Third Sector in Post-Communist Bulgaria. And Its Support for Young People in the Labour Market. The expanding third sector with its multiplicity of organisational forms and activities addresses a wide range of social problems that arise in the course of the economic and political restructuring in post-communist Bulgaria. This article discusses the support offered by nongovernment organisations (NGOs) to young people in their transition from school to work. It analyses results from research into two local labour markets in Bulgaria involving a survey of young people's experiences and case-studies of NGOs. The organisations active in both labour markets were predominantly new entities, often understaffed and with poor material provision. The foundations built around a legal property had more financial resources than the associations which relied mainly on voluntary labour. The non-profit organisations were free from ossified structures but suffered from a lack of professional expertise. There was little co-operation among the studied NGOs. The third sector in the two regions had mainly vertical links with organisations in the centre rather than pluralistic and horizontal relations among the local groups and foreign support was largely monopolised by central NGOs in Sofia. The hard economic situation in the country, the unwillingness of state agencies to cooperate and the widespread public suspicion to organised activism erected serious obstacles. The voluntary associations in our sample had a wide range of activities to support young people, typically offering advice, information and contacts. They were most effective in launching educational programmes and training courses but could rarely improve significantly the situation of the young unemployed by making them more employable or ready for entrepreneurship. The third sector in Bulgaria had not yet effectively filled in the social niche emptied after the withdrawal of the state from pervasive authoritarian intervention.

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