Tell us a bit about yourself. Who’s Rahim?

I am Rahim Zehdiev, a 27-year-old volunteer and a green ambassador at Young Improvers for Youth Development in Smolyan, Bulgaria. As a member of a marginalised group, I have always been passionate about creating positive changes and empowering communities, especially when it comes to environmental issues. 

What are the projects you are working on?

So I got involved with the Young Improvers through their initiative focused on environmental sustainability and youth development. And their mission aligns with my own values and aspirations and I saw an opportunity to make a meaningful impact in my community. I’m involved in their projects like in Erasmus and in European Solidarity Corps. So, I see it as though it’s my own mission.

What’s the mission about? 

It’s like a mission because I see the need for change in our community, in our local community and in our community in Bulgaria as well. I want to start involving young people in these projects. So they get empowered and we can together aim for a change. 

What kind of communities are you engaging? 

I come from a community of Muslim population, we are a minority in Bulgaria. And we face a lot of problems. Things are changing for the better, but we have a lot of issues from the past.

I’m addressing these problems right now with the European projects. When we attend projects abroad, we meet people like us and together, we find better solutions for our problems, because we have a lot of similar issues. And it gives us a shared sense of belonging for us when we share our problems. 

How do you engage the local minority?

We are trying to involve a lot of young people in my village, in the area around as well, by attracting them with a lot of things, because nowadays people are not too engaged. We find it difficult to find people who are willing to do activism and volunteer because they are easily distracted by everything else. And it’s even harder in my community because they are marginalised, and they have a lot of different views from the ordinary European people. That is because they are more conservative than the regular Europeans. And it’s very hard, but we find some ways to attract them. 

But it’s even more difficult to have a gender balance. We are a lot of boys, and we have like one, two, or three girls in the group. So firstly it’s hard to find people, and then it’s hard to strike a gender balance and to battle the conservative views. It’s really hard, but we are improving every day, and we are finding people in the end.

What do your projects look like? 

So our project is aiming to address environmental challenges and empower young individuals from marginalized communities. Our projects involve various activities such as awareness campaigns, educational workshops, and community engagement initiatives. So the projects are created to amplify the voices of those who are often underrepresented or misunderstood in the environmental movement and sustainable change.

What does activism mean to you?

Activism is really important for me because it is the main thing which can change things, and is the force to change something from bad to the better. And that’s exactly what we are trying to do here in my village, in the region, and in Bulgaria as well. 

Can you tell me about your personal journey?

Back in 2018, I participated in a project in Turkey in an Erasmus training course and it was the very first experience of these projects for me and that’s when everything started for me. Before that I didn’t know anything about activism, I didn’t know anything about volunteering and then with each new project I participated in, I started to be more active and to volunteer. First of all in our local community, in local projects and then abroad with the YEE team and I have participated in more than 20 projects since then. On the local level I even applied for our own projects and even had my own project in my village for building a youth space here.

What’s next for you?

I am thinking about applying for more projects. I will also participate in some projects with our partners in Europe and abroad. But the local projects are the most important for me.

“Because we have to change ourselves first, then we can share good examples abroad.”

What kind of projects would you want to do in your community right now? 

I want to make a screening event to project a movie against the plastic waste in our youth space. I want to play that movie because there is a big issue with plastic waste. Especially older people think that plastic is degradable in water and they throw the trash into the river. We have great nature here but the people do not appreciate it and they’re throwing everything into the river and it gets really messed up. 

So I’m not only trying to gain younger people, I’m trying to show even the eldest people here what is wrong. We host a lot of movie screenings, seminars and meetings. We also hosted a climate-themed game. 

What was the idea of the game?

It was a card game about climate change, what are its causes and how can we prevent it. It was really nice and a lot of young people gathered but sadly there were no women. This really saddened me, but I’m trying to improve this. I’m trying to fix this and I will do it. 

If you could send a message out to these people that you would like to engage more, what would you tell them? 

We need change. And we can be the change, because if we don’t act, if we don’t get involved, no one will. And the change is not going to happen by itself. It’s not easy, I know, but we can do it.