Be the change you want to see in the world...

In the beginning of July this year, Volunteer Bulgaria and university student volunteers organized a contest on the theme of “What Do We Know about the Bulgarian Heroes?” in Petko Slavejkov Home for Children without Parental Care. The event aimed to commemorate the 2nd of July - the Day of Hristo Botev and the other heroes who died in the name of Bulgaria’s liberty and independence. On the one hand, the contest assignments were not easy (e.g. learning and reciting Bulgarian epic poems by heart; writing Bulgarian heroes’ biographies; writing a paragraph, answering a question based on personal experience). However, on the other hand the prizes ensured by our volunteers seemed attractive enough for the participants- cinema tickets, cell phone vouchers and an MP3 player.

In the contest we had 6 participants altogether! We are proud of this significant number given the fact that it is usually hard to motivate the children to study and that the contest tasks were many and difficult. The participants were adolescents aged between 12 and 16 years. The indisputable winner was the 12-year-old Nadya who recited the two poems perfectly well.

Our team of volunteers and the Home’s team of psychologists served as a jury of the contest. The good cooperation between our two teams is of great importance for our present and future initiatives with the home’s residents.

“I was happy to see the youths motivated and learning. It was wonderful that they felt appreciated and awarded for their efforts. The best was that they took the contest more as an opportunity to support each other than to compete,” said Maggie, one of the volunteers.

We are looking forward to preparing the next contest.

The winner with her brother who supported her throughout the contest

Angel won the Special Jury Prize for his answer to the question “What did I learn from Levski?” (Levski is Bulgaria’s most eminent national hero). In his answer, Angel wrоte: “From Levski’s short life I drew a conclusion for my own life: under no circumstances should one give up. One should do everything with love and dedication, instead.”

This time instead of a short description of our project’s activities held at the end of 2008 in Petko Slevejkov Home for Children without Parental Care in Sofia, I will share with you my own experience, feelings and thoughts about them. The Disney Foundation trusted us again and financed our project with a Disney Mini Grant of $ 500. We partnered with the Community Support Center to the Home. This centre provided us with the premises and the equipment needed for achieving our goals.

We began by a nice movie screening (Disney’s “Brother Bear”). It was really exciting for me to see the children to sit down calmly and quietly for the first time and to watch the adventures of the two friends Kenai and Koda. Also for the first time I had the opportunity to see them all - about 40 -50 boys and girls aged between 8 and 16 years.. The impact of the movie was unexpected for us as the story touched everyone.

So we took the opportunity and used the movie story to start a discussion on friendship, mutual aid, mutual care and forgiveness. Then we made together a huge number of drawings of the movie characters Kenai and Koda.

Later, throughout the week after we continued with talking about human rights, mutual tolerance and friendship between the people. The children made tolerance posters and origami, and wrote essays. In addition, we did some work. In order to celebrate the UN International Volunteer Day (December 5 ) we decorated and planted 10 flowerpots. We also made cookies for the party commemorating December 10 - the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then we saw the art exhibition that the children made composed of the pieces of art they had made during the programme. We also had a lot of fun - chatting, laughing, eating cookies, playing with balloons and dancing.

The people who took part in the programme’s different activities were a colorful bunch of personalities and social backgrounds - about 50 children (residents of the Home), high school students, three European Volunteer Service volunteers and the Home’s personnel.

Ten university student volunteers, an artist, a mime and three wonderful grannies were our team leaders during the workshops. Wondering what unites us? Well, it is the desire to share our knowledge and positive energy with others while we are ourselves learning important lessons from them. Here are some of the moments that I will always remember:

While I was drawing mermaids for Yulia, I remembered my own childhood As a child I used to draw mermaids all the time with a set of old and a bit broken colorful pencils. No matter how difficult this made my painting I wouldn’t give up my mermaids for that.

My greatest achievement happened when I managed to convince two of the boys - Niky and Ioan - to take turns when they worked on one computer and to be patient to one another. I felt really proud when I saw Ioan typing his name confidently and really fast.

Making a tolerance poster

I was most surprised when Vesi one of the girls told me it was the fist time she saw dough while Valya shared that she had never seen raw eggs before.

Grandma Didi is explaining how to make dough for cookies

The moments that touched me most during the two-week programme were:

- When little Alish (one of the children considered the most mischievous) met us at the door with Christmas bells and gave them to us as presents. Those are the most special Christmas bells in the whole world.

- When little Yulia read aloud my essay on how I feel about my best friends Olia and Geri and introduced me to her little brother.

What did I learn?

I learnt that every human being - from the youngest to the oldest - is unique and very special. I also got to love my friends even more and made new friends. I found out that caring for others, educating them and being friends with them are not easy tasks and should be done with great attention and dedication.

What did I not learn?

I didn’t learn how to make paper rockets and cookies.

What did I miss?

I would like to have had more people to help the children to find out the beautiful and magic sides of life and the world. I think I have missed YOU.

Here you can see more pictures showing beautiful moments: http://picasaweb.google.com/volunteer.bg/bDBjcG#

I would be happy to meet you soon because, as you can see volunteering is awarded with the best prizes in life.

Smiles,
Maggie

Today, we, the volunteers from all over the world, are celebrating the UN International Volunteer Day - the day to celebrate the successful volunteer initiatives through organizing even more volunteer initiatives. Only in this way the people who have felt the positive energy and satisfaction from voluntary work can pass on the spirit of volunteering to others - both to their friends and family and to total strangers who are ready to help with their voluntary work and friendship.

December 5th was announced International Volunteer Day by the United Nations Organization in 1885. Every year thousands of people get involved in service activities and do voluntary work for a better life in their communities or travel millions of kilometers and help people living in far away countries.

Volunteering is an extremely special thing to do. On the one hand, one gets dedicated to a good cause such as making the lives of others better, more beautiful and more successful. On the other hand, one learns to give without expecting anything in return. However, what one gets in the end is a priceless award - personal development and satisfaction, sincere gratitude and a lot of new friends.

Volunteer Bulgaria has been involved in organizing service activities for several years now. The organization works in the sphere of help for underprivileged children, ecology and civic engagement. We would like to express our profound gratitude to all the volunteers who trusted and supported us in our initiatives. They have always been bright and devoted people of all ages and with various social backgrounds. We also want to thank all other organizations throughout the country that develop the volunteer culture with a lot of love and enthusiasm through their activities.

If you have already participated in a one-day volunteer project or in a long-term programme, please send us your photos and we would be happy to upload them to our gallery. Share with us your experience as a volunteer because this is an extremely valuable experience that deserves to be shared; in this way you can inspire many other people who will follow your bright example.

If you have never been a volunteer before but you are eager to join us, please drop us a line. Tell us how you would like to participate and we will be happy to get you involved in one of our ongoing voluntary activities.

On December 5th, 2008, volunteers from Volunteer Bulgaria will plant flowers in flowerpots together with children from Petko Slavejkov Home for Children without Parental Care. Thus, they will celebrate UN Tolerance Day and the 60^th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10th).

Wish you an inspired and inspirational International Volunteer Day!

http://vbox7.com/play:68f9c028

The beginning of the autumn turned out to be the best time to award the winner in our spring contest on the theme of More Beautiful Surroundings for More Harmonious Lives. While in the spring season we tried to make the surroundings greener and more colorful by planting grass, trees and flowers, now the autumn naturally made the landscape more beautiful by coloring the leaves of those same trees in yellow, orange and red. The autumn leaves and little branches fallen on the ground were used for filling the contest award - a 350-litre eco-composter donated by EcoCompost Company (http://www.ecocompost.bg/).

The award went to “Drujba” Kindergarten in the City of Plovdiv. The awarding ceremony was held on September 30th, 2008. An important part of it was a short demonstration by EcoCompost how to use the composter. The kids and their parents took part by collecting autumn leaves and small branches fallen on the ground.

We are convinced that by using the composter the kids will acquire a taste for taking care of nature not only nearby their homes but also in those more remote mountain and sea places that need our help to remain beautiful or become cleaner.

You can see more photos from the award ceremony at http://picasaweb.google.com/volunteer.bg/inODGD#

You can also enjoy a few inspiring stories and photos from the beautification of different corners of Bulgaria. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas, critique, inspiration, worries and accomplishments with us!

We’ve Got a Cycle of Peace Now in Sofia

This year I got involved as a volunteer in the cleaning and improvements made in the Petko Slavejkov Home for Children without Parental Care in Sofia. Volunteer Bulgaria took this initiative and brought together volunteers (i.e university students, friends and children residents of the Home) to take action.

The idea was to make the Home’s yard a pleasant place for play and recreation. Besides, through getting the children from the Home actively involved in the activity we could teach them teamwork skills, love for the plants and a desire to take care of the greenery.

We started by collecting the garbage from the yard and painting the climbing frames. A company donated all the shrubbery, plants and flowers and ensured a specialist in landscape architecture. With the specialist’s knowledge we planted and arranged beautiful green corners. Then we fitted the 3 benches and a seesaw (all made specially for the occasion) in the Circle of Peace. The Circle of Peace is a wonderful place, one of Diana’s ideas, with many flowers and white stones arranged there by the children. In the end we treated us with goodies for the well done job. We played with a ball, we made soap balloons and we gave awards to the most energetic participants.

Personally, I was very happy not only with the result in the yard but also with the warm friendship that emerged between us, the volunteers and the children. I am sure that we will have other as nice and rewarding meetings in the future.

You can find more photos from the initiative here: http://picasaweb.google.com/volunteer.bg/GlobalYouthServiceDay2008

PLOVDIV - PARENTS IN THE SPRING

I am happy to have two wonderful children. I often ask myself whether I am a good parent and I am doing the best for my children. On Saturday, however, I felt a 100% good parent. Why? Well, because I got myself together and together with about 15 enthusiasts cleant the kindergarten’s yard and planted a few flowers and plants in it.

The Idea

I had had the idea for quite some time before I gathered the courage to put it into practice. My big dream to see my children playing and growing up in pleasant surroundings was the driving force that helped me organize the activity. I dreamt of green surroundings that smelled well and were pleasant to touch. The good things about the place were many: a big yard full of trees and shrubs with wonderful spots for each group of children. However, the problems were just as many: broken benches, empty sandpits, nursery garden overgrown with couch grass, fallen leaves and stifled shrubs. In other words, the place barely reminded of the playground it was supposed to be.

The Solution

So in the end I decided to organize an activuty called Spring Cleaning and Planting in the Kindergarten.

An article in Gorichka.bg claimed that the city represented a perfect milieu for sustainable development as much as the kindergarten offered a perfect environment for our children’s steady development and education. The kindergarten is a fantastic place. It has a roof, a yard, food, theatre and games. Certainly, we cannot rely solely on the municipality and the kidergarten’s personnel to maintain the premises. We, the parents, also have to give our contribution. At least that is what five mothers and I thought and that’s why they joined me in this crazy idea.

The Event’s Organization

I am not proud to admit that our organization didn’t meet very high standards. It consisted of writing and posting of an announcement around inviting all people who wanted to join us to send us an e-mail.

Personally, I called a friend who is in the ornamental business and deals with the cultivation of ornamental flowers and roses. I shared with him our idea as well as the fact that we needed some enriched soil. His response surprised me positively. He said that since it was for the children there shouldn’t be any problem and even scolded me that I hadn’t called earlier so that he could have the time to get the magnolias for which I had also asked. For the next time he promised a magnolia and various ornamental shrubs. Those magnolias that we managed to plant this time were also a gift from him that had spent two years in flowerpots at my balcony. However, there they didn’t grow up properly and I believe that now in the yard the magnolias will develop better.

The Event

On Saturday we wished our 4-year-old son Happy Birthday! We prepared the delicious Birthday cake and we three (without the Birthday boy) jumped in the car with all the soil, shrubs, the broom, the spade and the rake and we headed for the kindergarten. We parked in the backyard where I had never been before. It turned out that there is a kind of a composter where leaves, gathered diligently by uncle Stoyan, had been decaying for years,. You can imagine how happy I was to see one fulfilled dream.

Unfortunately, we had only two men in the group who were eagerly digging two round playgrounds, overgrown with couch grass and soil turned into sun-dried bricks. About two thirds of the kindergarten’s personnel (i.e. the teachers, the cooking and cleaning ladies as well as uncle Stoyan) attended the cleaning. The children were happy to collect the sand and take it back to the sandpits. Then they swept the sandpits’ frames, sifted out the sand and thus removed the garbage from it. Later on someone brought flowerpots and the children took to filling them with soil. For these flowerpots we had prepared roots of chlorophytum for the children’s rooms.

After I had found the composter earlier I was happily surprised by the presence of a water pump. We used it to water around with underground water

Today, my daughter was eager to go to the kindergarten and to keep her promise to tell all her fellows from the group that it is not easy at all to bring the sand back in the sandpits and to motivate them to keep it in its place.

The Outcome

The beautiful yard is shining! Certainly, it still needs a lot of work and vertical planning. However, what we accomplished was significant. We hope that other people will also notice and appreciate our work and this initiative will not remain just a one-time outburst of good will. Two shrubs planted, much geranium and ornamental ivy, clean playgrounds, cultivated old plantations, a bit of physical activity for the bodies tired of office work -all this represented the final result.

The Lesson

It was more of a lesson for us the adults than for our children. In the end, there is hardly anything more pleasant than the fact that this beauty is one’s own work!

Future plans

We plan to renovate the composter to use the ready compost below, to make vertical planning and a watering system with underground water. We need some sponsors for the ceramic flowerpots for the terraces and the cascading pelargonium provided by the friend I mentioned earlier; I already have soil. I was promised more magnolias and shrubs. I also suggest to be ensured prizes for all participants such as linen shopping bags with the kidergarten’s logo and an inspiring motto promoting their use in the place of plastic bags.

Sofia, Izgrev Neighbourhood

We posted an announcement of the event on the building that invited the neighbours to join the initiative to renovate the building surroundings. The people who were interested attended the meeting. These were the ones who really wanted to change the surroundings for the better. There were about six people. The elderly predominated in number. We shared our ideas and expectations. Despite the meeting’s rather pessimist tone claiming that the change would be short-term and in vain, the hope that it would be for the better was strong and we decided to take an action.

We agreed on a day and time for the activity. Some people promised to find seedlings, other to ensure gloves and sacks, still others to bring instruments.

When the day came we were all prepared and ready to start. We worked until the late afternoon. We collected the garbage, swept, dug parts of the garden, planted geranium and even tulip bulbs that a neighbour had brought all the way from the Netherlands.

What impressed me most were the dedicated efforts especially of the oldest among us. We worked hard and I was surprised how tiring it was. I realized that the number of people mattered a lot and even one person more would have made a great difference! Thank you everybody! Now I can say that I definitely feel every neighbour who took part in the volunteer activity closer than before. I think that the feeling is reciprocal. Even this relatively modest activity was worth the efforts! Of course, we had different opinions how to do the job but I didn’t allow myself to impose my opinion. I just gave suggestions and then stood back and listened to the other people’s views. We managed to reach an agreement and we worked together. I think that it was a nice psychological exercise - to invite the people to take part in the initiative, to have the responsibility to meet and organize them, to suggest ideas as well as to listen to other ideas without imposing one’s own.

Organizer: Georgi, Izgrev Neighbourhood, Sofia

Lyaskovets - catching enthusiasm and a well done job

Our friend, an advisor in Lyaskovets municipality, helped us. He assisted us to get the volunteer activity announced in the local media as well as to carry out the garbage disposal

Although we launched an announcement in the media and distributed fliers about the event the only people who showed up were my niece, her father Hristo (the municipality’s advisor) his wife and three children, the children’s friends and I. Altogether we were 10 people involved.

With gloves and sacks we collected the garbage from the park. We cleant a distance of 3 km. It took us 3 hours to reach the monastery. On the way a mother with her child and people from the local tourist club Yantra joined us. The people we met on the way were happy to see our efforts and wondered why we hadn’t asked them to take part . Throughout the activity we called upon the people to preserve the nature and throw their garbage only in the waste bins. We were surprised to see how much garbage we collected. My personal observations showed that most of the garbage was bottles and plastic bags.

All of us were happy with our work and we considered carrying out the same activity next year

Greetings, Ivelina

Ruse - in full harmony with nature

In Ruse we cleant a beautiful place for the local people’s recreation - Lipnik Park. A beautiful lake, a forest and clean air - all these are located only at about 10 km from the city. Forty people as well as 10 children from the nearby Nikolovo village participated in the initiative.

We collected an immense amount of garbage from the river’s banks. In the park itself there were views similar to the one below. The children took the situation as a game and a personal challenge and contributed to the region’s embellishment.

When we were done with our tasks we got together to have bread rolls with honey and fruits.

Then we played volleyball, relaxed and went home happy.

Organizer: Champions of nature from eco-club Zelena pyteka (Green Pathway) Ruse

This year in the occasion of the International Peace Day - 21 September - Volunteer Bulgaria in cooperation with the United Nations Association of Bulgaria and the support of Sofia Municipality, the UNDP, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria and the Legal World magazine organized a wonderful celebration in Sofia’s South Park.

About 20 young volunteers came in the park in the sunny afternoon to tell the people more about the historical background of Peace Day, to give hugs for peace and to collect peace pledges.

Later on, a concert took place at the open-air stage. Among the special guest performers were the singer Kotseto Kalki and the X-R@y band. H. E. Ambassador Ivan Garvalov, President of the United Nations Association of Bulgaria and Mr Mariyan Karagjozov, member of the Association’s Youth Organization, gave speeches on the importance of peace around the globe.

The children also came up with calls for peace by making colour drawings and peace pledges on the asphalt.

To find more photos of Peace Day, please click here.

You have still some time to send us your peace messages. In the occasion of Peace Day and the International Day for Tolerance (16 November) Volunteers Bulgaria suggested to Bulgarian students to think of the importance of peace and tolerance as well as ways to achieve them.

Since we are strongly convinced that every step towards the attainment of peaceful coexistence and mutual tolerance are invaluable we won’t announce a contest with awards. We call upon all young people in Bulgaria to think what peace and tolerance mean to them and what they do to achieve peace and tolerance in their own families, circle of friends and schools.