Provide Long-Term Mentors to Disadvantaged Youth

Dear friends,

We are happy to inform you that since the beginning of the new academic year two girls from Kostinbrod and Kazanlak have joined a practical mentoring program. The two girls and their mentors will have the opportunity to work on a real project for updating the website of the Step for Bulgaria Foundation.

Over the next three months, the girls will gain practical knowledge in the field of digital marketing, copywriting and building websites with word press. They will get acquainted with techniques for preparing texts and storytelling. As part of their mentoring program, young people will have the opportunity to communicate not only with mentors, but also with our volunteers, students and teachers. They will conduct interviews and collect emotional stories from the classrooms. 

This mentoring program and the work of the girls will be entirely digital. We believe that working on a real project will give the girls practical knowledge and skills with which to then find a way to their future professional realization.

Thank you for helping us organize these projects and give young people the opportunity to write their inspiring story.

Dear friends and supporters,

We hope you are well and safe in this challenging period.

With this report, we are happy to share the results we have achieved in our mentoring program over the past school year, which is even more uncertain and difficult, for the students from small rural areas we work with.

As we wrote in the last report, we started the 6-month mentoring program "Step for me", in which 21 students work on individual projects to create their own career portfolio. The students are in 11th grade in several Bulgarian schools.

The Step for Me program includes consistent work of young people through four main thematic areas: 1. Exploring personal skills, strengths and qualities; 2. Getting to know and researching various professions; 3. Academic orientation and individual research of universities; 4. Goal setting and planning the achievement of individual goals in the summer.

All the results of the research done by the students, the results of the tasks they worked on, the conclusions and analyzes of the collected information, personal insights, desires and goals, the young people noted in their individual digital portfolio. A single student creates his portfolio in paper format.

We are extremely happy to share that 73% of the students kept their motivation and high commitment in the program and managed to go through all 4 thematic areas. 20% of the students completed their individual projects partially by doing 2 or 3 of the stages.

In the process of the program the youth were supported by our career orientation consultant at the Step for Bulgaria Foundation, as well as by volunteer mentors who work with students to develop skills for critical thinking, design thinking, goal setting.

For students who expressed a specific interest in a particular professional field, additional individual meetings were organized with volunteer specialists.

We judge the success of the program by individual projects of the students and from the anonymous survey, with which we wanted to assess the attitudes and beliefs that the students demonstrate. As you will see from the attached photos, 78% of those who completed the survey believe that "My future profession depends on my choice", 50% say that "If we want to be successful in our profession, we will need to constantly learn new things and challenge ourselves ”and 50% think that“ If I set specific and measurable goals, I am more likely to achieve them. ”

Two girls from the school in the village of Gorna Malina joined the mentoring program "Step for me" in a mentor-mentee format. The girls managed to go through the four thematic areas of the program and develop their career portfolios.

We share the words of Maria (name changed) about the program: “These workshops brought me a lot of positive emotions, which is very important for me. Thanks for the opportunity to meet so many people from different professions. I really want to study higher education and the program helped me to reduce my choice to two specialties - kinesitherapy or elementary pedagogy. I have another year to make a final decision. I really liked the meetings with Asya. It was useful for me to learn what I am good at and how to apply my strengths…. I think I am more risky and confident now, I have managed to develop skills such as critical thinking, communication skills, self-motivation, the ability to learn from my mistakes, flexibility, creativity, etc."

To monitor the effectiveness of the mentoring program, we conducted an initial and outgoing self-assessment by the mentees. They made a self-assessment of some of the main criteria that were set as development goals during the program: Confidence in speaking with an interlocutor, Self-confidence, Selection and analysis of information, Ability to set goals and follow them.

We are proud to share that all youths we work with demonstrate an increase in self-esteem according to the evaluated criteria.

Thank you for your support in making these results real.