Education Bulgaria Project #5271

Summer School for Children without Parents

by Step for Bulgaria Foundation

Project Report | Oct 22, 2011
Summer Academy: September 2011 Report

By Elena Furnadjieva | CEO

Dear Friends,

Now that the summer is over, we are getting ready to begin the new academic year with a new set of exciting projects that will empower our young participants with the knowledge and self-esteem. But more on this later.

This past summer, we held our Summer Academy in a different way. After careful analysis of our students' needs we decided it would be most useful for them to gain work experience in a field of their interest. We connected two of our students with successful and socially engaged businesses which provided invaluable professional opportunities and a lot of care and character training to these youth over the summer.

For example, Georgi interned in a large, high-end hotel on the Black Sea coast where he was taught valuable skills and gained professional experience at the hotel's restaurant and lobby bar. We're happy to report that his supervisors were very happy with the progress he made and even extended his stay for an extra two weeks. We saw this young man develop not only his professional knowledge but also his interpersonal skills and awareness of what it takes to be independent, to earn the trust and friendship of new colleagues. Georgi came back with increased sense of responsibility and confidence. He is now determined to finish his last year of high school and apply to university where he wants to study biology. We're right now looking for a mentor who could help him prepare for that.

Apart from seeing the incredible effect this summer experience has had on building the character and skill of our students without parents, we have also learned what it takes to identify an appropriate placement. We faced multiple challenges to provide our students with the right options. The first challenge is identifying the right kind of employer - whose staff would be willing to accept and engage with this "different" employee - young, inexperienced, never lived in a normal family, possibly lacking some expected social and working habits. The second challenge is helping the student obtain all documents and certificates needed to be legally employed. The third one is preparing the student with the right attitude and habits - insisting that they show up on time every day, that they plan carefully their time and the use of their personal resources and budget, that they be mindful of their colleagues' expectations and routine.

These learnings will help us place 10-15 youth in similar summer internships next summer and help them gain the experiences that will help them become more confident and set a direction for their independent life. Over the next months, as we work with about 50 youth in our full-year program, we'll identify those participants who are ready to embark on such a challenge next summer.

We thank you all for your support and interest in our activities and look forward to share more successes over the coming months!

Best Regards,

Step for Bulgaria Team

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Jun 20, 2011
Summer Academy: June 2011 Report

By Elena Furnadjieva | CEO

Dear All,

Over the past few months we have been working hard with ~50 children living without parental care in four Bulgarian cities (Sofia, Plovdiv, Berkovitsa and Varna) to make sure they complete successfully our yearlong life-skills education program. In the meantime, we have also been thinking of the best way to re-format our Summer Academy program in order to maximize the impact on the participating youths’ preparation for independent life given the limited resources we have. After much consideration of various options, the Step for Bulgaria management team decided to pilot this summer a new format of our Summer Academy that would provide our target group of teenagers with hands-on professional experience. The new format will consist of:

1. Two three-day long motivational sessions to help the youth develop professional attitudes and understanding of employers’ essential expectations: responsibility, ownership, honesty and reliability. In addition, we’ll be fostering a sense of community among the group.

2. A 2-3 week internship for each student at one employer, which will require of them to go to work every day, complete tasks at different functions of the organization, and meet their employer’s expectations. Each teenager will be paired with a volunteer mentor, who would check on the intern at the end of each work-day to make sure the kid is learning what it takes to be a good employee and a respected colleague. Mentors will be there to support both the intern and their employer in setting and living up to their mutual expectations.

3. If needed, several weeks of additional vocational training depending on the needs of each student.

4. We would also like to provide the participating youth with English lessons, as they all recognize the importance of speaking fluently this international language. We’ll do our best to provide a volunteer teacher who could teach them every day after work.

We’ve so far selected 10 teenagers of age 16 and above (from Sofia, Plovdiv and Berkovitsa) who we believe will be able to match employer expectations and take seriously their internship this summer. Their professional interests vary from cooking and bar tending to theater acting and sports. We’ll do our best to identify appropriate internships and vocational trainings for each. Based on the results and impact we see on their development this summer, we intend to expand the re-formatted Summer Academy to more children next year.

Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers and board members, we have applied for and won a grant from the Bulgarian Foundation: Workshop for Civil Initiatives which will cover 80% of our program costs, including the Summer Academy, for next year (~15,000 EUR). We hope we can raise the other 20% with your great help and continuous support.

Thank you all for maintaining your contributions and providing spiritual support when we need them the most! Without you, our work and our students’ personal growth and development as responsible and successful adults would be impossible! Thank you!

Best,

Step for Bulgaria management team

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Mar 15, 2011
Latest work in preparation for this summer

By Lubomir Gunev | Board Member

Dear Friends,

We are halfway through our full year program with the Summer Academy approaching fast. We just completed our Human Rights and Discrimination module. We were supported by 15 volunteers who were trained by the Helsinki Committee in Bulgaria. We were fortunate enough to reach out to over 70 children in 6 cities. In each orphanage we discussed the universal human rights, why it is important to know them, how to identify and handle discrimination and also the responsibilities each of us has in society. The participating students from all orphanages come together in two final events on March 12th and 27^th where they’ll debate the importance of human rights and discrimination. The children responded beautifully to the discussions and we all feel that this module helped raise awareness and made them more self confident.

After the wrap-up of the Human Rights and Discrimination module we will move to the Economic module. It is a program which prepares our students with the professional skills they will need to get jobs. We will discuss topics such as time management, communication, teamwork and personal budgeting. These are all very basic skills that they are not taught in their orphanages.

We are looking into our Summer Academy and what we want to achieve with it. We’ve noticed that there is a gap between their on-the-job and the classroom experience. This is why we will move from an academic to a more practical approach in this edition of the program. We would like to work with our most active and devoted students and place them in internships with real businesses of their choice. Along with this, we will enroll them in vocational training in order to help them get the job they want after leaving the orphanage. Of course we will continue to provide English and leadership training in order to enhance their professional skills.

Thank you all for you support. We are looking forward to hearing your comments or proposals. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

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