Provide Long-Term Mentors to Disadvantaged Youth

Dear Friends,

The New Year is knocking on our door and we are waiting eagerly for it to come as we have planned many new activities for our youngsters and volunteers in the Mentoring program. But first let me tell you what happened till now.

During the year we managed to include 31 youths in the Mentoring Program and currently 29 are working individually with their mentors. Each pair made their own schedule for the meetings and the topics they worked on. We believe that this approach is the best way to respond to the personal needs of each youngster and our experience during the year proved it. Each mentor supports the mentee in facing everyday challenges as well as in planning the future according to the level of personal development and abilities of the youths.

Besides the individual work with youngster we also planned and organized group meetings. These were joint events (trainings) for youngsters and volunteers. In the last quarter of the year the training was dedicated to the subject “Effective Communication”. Two of our volunteers took the initiative to develop the program and lead the sessions. The youngsters learned basic rules and principles of effective communication through different interactive games and group-work. And the best thing was that the youngsters and the volunteers had the opportunity to get to know each other and thus new friendships were made. Both youngsters and volunteers were very pleased and happy with the training and shared with us that they want to have more often such meetings/trainings. So, during the next year, we plan to organize regularly joint events.

During the second half of the year we also organized an initial training for the third group of 13 new volunteers who joined the program. At the moment we have 54 volunteers in total willing and ready to support underprivileged youths. We plan an initial training for the fourth group in January 2015.

In December we celebrated the end of a successful year with a Christmas Party. At the party we invited all youths and volunteers in the program – there were lots of fun and dances. We prepared a quiz with specially selected questions (some of them educative, others just for fun) and small presents for all.

At the end we want to express our gratitude to all of you who supported us during the year. Your donations made it possible to start and develop this Mentoring Program and in this way to be able to provide individual support and group-trainings for our youths as well as to develop a strong network of volunteers. You believed in our cause and we trust this partnership as we saw the smiles on the faces of the underprivileged youths that you brought.

Out team wishes you a Happy New Year and very successful and full of joy 2015! We are looking forward to the next year full of plans and ready to face challenges and we hope you’ll stay with us and continue making this possible with your donations.

Together we can make a difference!

Sincerely yours,

The Step for Bulgaria team

Dear Friends,

I’m happy to share with you that during the last three months our family has grown – we have 10 more volunteers who passed successfully the process of selection and their initial training.

I want to tell you a little bit more about the training. The training has four main topics – volunteering, specifics of the children and youths living in care, effective communication and mentoring. The duration of the training is two days and it is an obligatory step for all volunteers before starting work with mentees.

First we talk about volunteering – specifics, rights and obligations of the volunteers. It is really important all of us to have the same understanding about voluntary work, especially when it concerns interactions with underprivileged youth.

The second important topic in the training is connected with the specifics of the children and youth who live in institutions. Very often youths have some deficitsin their intellectual, emotional and social development. It is very important for the volunteers to be prepared and not to have unrealistic expectations. It is also true that sometimes the volunteers anticipate worse situation than the reality which also could lead to frustration when meeting the youth. Our experience with the first group of volunteers showed us that during the training we should pay attention also to the differences in the types of social services in Bulgaria.

The third topic is extremely important as the main “instrument” for the volunteers in their work with youths is their communication skills. During these sessions we discuss the main principles of effective communication (active listening, giving feedback, summarizing, etc). We also pay attention to non-verbal communication and its significance in the process of building relationships and trust in our interlocutor.

During the last session we talk about Mentoring – what it means to be a Mentor, how to become a good Mentor. We provide some practical tips and the volunteers can test themselves by role playing on cases from the practice.

Our new group of ten volunteers who successfully passed the training are looking forward to meet their mentees and start working together. They are all very motivated and ready to bring change to youths’ lives.

You made this possible - thank you for all your support! Look forward to our next report for more information on how youths are working with their Mentors.

Sincerely yours,

The Step for Bulgaria team