Provide Long-Term Mentors to Disadvantaged Youth

Greetings from the Step for Bulgaria Foundation!

The last couple of months in our office have been quite busy and we are excited to share the news with you. As a matter of fact, we are happy to report that we prepared this message from our brand new office, but more on that - and how it helps our mentoring program - below :)


Since you last heard from us, our team was excitedly joined by a new Director of Operations, Yordan (Dancho) Penev, who added momentum to our our mission to mentor underprivileged youh for success.
  

Without further ado, here is what went on after:

First things first, in preparation for the Christmas holidays, we organized a large get-together for the entire mentoring network to reflect on and celebrate our achievements during the past year. A well planned 4-hour event, the get-together kept everyone engaged, in between the good food and the pleasant company, in a series of educational games designed to inspire a desire in the attendees to keep stepping on the road of personal development and achievement. Judging by feedaback from both mentors and mentees, we were successful in bringing everyone together so as to situate every individual's successes in the context of the network of friends they have through the mentoring program, as well as to exchange experiences and motivate each other to work through the program and collaborate still further. The event was attended by 25+ youths and 15-ish of their mentors. We were excited to see some of our young attendees introduce us to firends of theirs whom they thought could benefit from the mentoring program too :) 

For the end of last year and the beginning of the new one, we too, reviewed our own achievements, what went well and what we could do better. After initial internal strategizing and deliberating, we opened the discussion about restructuring our mentoring program ("Mentoring 2.0") to all participants, partners, and other interested parties. As a first positive result of these discussions, we are happy to report that we extended our partnerships to reach new mentees from SOS Children's Villages Bulgaria and the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award. We also formed partnerships with 2 other Bulgarian NGOs who work with youths, Alliance for Children and Youth and Light for Light. As a result of these, our mentoring program is being expanded by 11 new mentoring pair. Here is to hoping that soon more will follow suit! Finally, we joined forces with yet another Bulgarian youth-focused nonprofit - Trotoara Foundation - by moving in their neighboring office to facilitate collaboration (more on that in our next project report!!). 

  
All through this month and the last one, we have kept the discussions going (individually or through workshops) so as to plan how to maximize the effectiveness of our mentoring help to youth from underprivileged situations. We have gained remarkable ground, but there is still work to do before we can officialize the well-polished "2.0". You can hold us to keep you posted!

We wish to thank each and everyone of you for supporting our cause. Your aid means a lot to us and we do everything we can to amplify it so it can reach more underprivileged Bulgarian youths, more effectively. Every bit you donate helps us take another step.

Please join us as we continue to pace determinedly to the benefit of Bulgaria's underprivileged youth!

With best wishes,

Step for Bulgaria Foundation