Our role
Where Friends of Bulgaria sits in all this — what the funding buys, which centres it reaches, and how we check that it worked.
What our funding actually buys
Friends of Bulgaria works through Project Partners who deliver care for children’s welfare and quality of life across the country. The Children’s Clubs are the clearest example: a weekly programme of activities, each chosen to develop something specific.
The Children’s Clubs
- Self-confidence and expression — through music and dance
- Social skills — through collaborative activities and games
- Personal relationships and emotional security — through mentoring schemes
- Expression — through the creative arts
- Life skills — cooking, sewing and the practical business of running a home
- Personal initiative — through outward-bound activities and summer camps
Case studies in de-institutionalisation
Two centres show the process at close range over a long period:
- Troyan — the Dalbok Dol Centre for Social Rehabilitation and Integration, 2005–2013
- Lovec — the Paraskeva Neikova Dom
Why the ZOV partnership works
Our closest partnership is with ZOV in the Veliko Tarnovo region, and it benefits from resources that happen to sit together in one place:
- Veliko Tarnovo University has a leading department in the social sciences, developing both academic and practical professional training
- ZOV’s project director, Katerina Zlatkova-Doncheva, is a university doctoral researcher in the field
- The projects we fund with ZOV have made an acknowledged contribution to provincial and municipal implementation of government de-institutionalisation policy, in close collaboration with partner NGOs
- Local communities supply volunteers with a genuine awareness of what progressive childcare looks like
How we know it works
We are a volunteer charity awarding other people’s money to other people’s projects, so monitoring is not optional. Delivery and outcomes are followed through:
- Site visits to see the work in progress
- Regular feedback reports against what the original proposal promised
- Regular dialogue with Project Partners between reports
- Contextual updates from partners’ own newsletters
The reports below are examples of what comes back.
Reported outcomes
Stand with Bulgaria’s children.
A gift funds therapy, a summer-camp place, or a young person’s first steps into adult life — and Gift Aid adds 25% at no cost.