Archive for Events
Four New Foreign Volunteers
The voulnteers: Tomas, Veronika, Hana, Jaroslav
Don Bosko Bulgaria Foundation again won a project for the European Voluntary Service – „For a Better Chance 2″. We are again a host organization of Czech volunteers and again the sending organization is Sadba, Czech Republic. But now the volunteers are four. Three of them are in Stara Zagora and one in Kazanlak. A fifth one volunteer is going to come in January and he will work in Kazanlak.
Welcoming the volunteers
Welcome, Veronika 
First touch with the Roma kids
Modern Ballet Competition for Roma Girls
After the breakdance competition in the Roma district for the boys who come to our center, we made a competition also for the girls who come to our modern ballet lessons. The group is now only from beginners and therefore we made it more simple, but again with the goal to increase their enthusiasm. The participants competed in two stages. Their task was to create their own dance for a song that we gave them during the tournament. The winner is Stefka Gancheva, 11 years old.
Първите три
MORE PICTURES: HERE
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A Breakdance Competition in the Roma District
A Breakdance Competition in the Roma District
A breakdance competition was performed for a second year in the Roma district of Stara Zagora on 8 October. The rivals were pairs of boys from the dancing lessons of Don Bosko Bulgaria Foundation.
The two winners
The participants were 10-15 boys who were 9-19 years old. Unlike the previous year, now it was a competition between pairs. After several stages, only three pairs remained – for first, second and third place. The winners were the team of Tanyo Tanev and Gospodin Petkov. As jury were their dancing teachers Stoyan Gospodinov and Sofiya Naneva. The evaluation criteria were complex, but higher priority took technical skills, sense of rhythm, stage behavior and level of development.
The breakdnace teacher - Stoyan Gospodinov
„This year the challengers showed even higher level“ – concluded their breakdance teacher Stoyan Gospodinov. The winners received rewards and of course, applause from their friends and neighbors.
MORE CLIPS – HERE
MORE PICTURES – HERE
Participation in the “Different Sight” Fest with Two Workshops
On 18-19 Septeber Don Bosco Bulgaria Foundation took part in the fourth edition of the annual fest „Different Sight“. The festival is about contemporary art and culture and includes thousands of people for three days. We were invited to participate with two workshops – rattan basket weaving and the juggling tool flowerstick. Each one that came to our workshops could make a basket or flowerstick and to take it for free.
Rattan basket
- Flowerstick
For our foundation this fest is very useful. There our Roma kids and youths could see many kinds of contemporary arts and crafts. This opens their horizons and could influence their dreams.
More PHOTOS could be seen in the FACEBOOK gallery.
Follow-up „For a Better Chance“ Project
From 08.07 to 13.07.2011 in the center for children and youths „Oasis“ in Kazanlak there was a voluntary camp, where the two EVS volunteers performed the follow-up for the Don Bosko Bulgaria project „For a Better Chance“.
There were two aims. The first one was the youths from the camp to be informed about the idea of volunteering and the possibilities that the program „Youth in Action“ offers.
The second aim was the perticipants to do voluntary work during the meeting to have some experience that could help them during the discussions.
Thus we attempted to make a more vivid and colorful picture. Several hours per day the participants were working. After that, they had meetings with the two EVS Czech volunteers Marketa Obruchova and Monika Petruhova, who shared their experience from the project and from the Czech Republic. The participants were also watching movies about volunteering.
During the last day of the meeting, there were also invited representatives of other organizations. Tose who came were teams from „Samaritans“, Stara Zagora, from „Youth Development Center – Mutual Aid“, Kazanlak and Salesians of Don Bosco in Bulgaria.
The two girls represented their ten months work with pictures and words and tried to show the intensity of their work with a stage game that demonstrated how multitask should be the EVS volunteers sometimes.
After the game, there was a movie, made by the sending organisation SADBA (Chech), which demonstrated their work style, the way they prepare volunteers and the multitude of their volunteers.
The meeting ended with giving some advertising materials – T-shirts and a snack, where the participants could have more informal communication.
Martina Staneva-Antonova
More PICTURES could be seen HERE.
Summer Camp for Boys
The summer camp for boys from the Roma district this year was on 2-7 August. The topic of the camp was connected with the Biblical hero Abraham. During the camp we had the possibility to reflect on the hard moments in Abraham’s life. This helps us become more tough in our struggles.
We had the possibility to swim in „Koprinka“ lake. The weather was excellent and therefore we did it every afternoon. We hope that the youths have learned many useful things and new games.
Martin Jilek
Summer Camp for Girls „Jane of Ark“
„Jane of Ark – this was the topic of the summer camp for girls from our center in the Roma district. It was held on 18-23 July in a hotel next to the „Koprinka“ lake, near the town of Kazanlak.
During the 5 days the kids were involved in Jane’s life. Every day there were topics, connected with their life and then the program continuied with game about Jane. During the afternoons the girls were relaxing swimming in the lake with life jackets. Then, games about the story were waiting for them and evening programs after the dinners.
During the last day the girls, who were in a role of soldiers of Jane of Ark, found a treasure full of surprises.
Desislava Frengieva
Interactive Geography Lessons for Roma Kids
Could geography be interesting for students from Roma schools in Bulgaria? Most Bulgarians whould say it could not. But let’s change a little the way we think about it.
Vesselin Kissiov teaches about Africa.
Durung the summer we continue our study room in our center in the Roma district, but in a different way. The study room is in the morning and only for mathematics and Bulgarian. The afternoons are for improving the student’s knoledge about some school subject. Last year we did interactive lessons in history of Bulgaria and the interest of the students was encouraging. Because of the interactive method, we were able to hold their atention easy even for 50 minutes lessons.
Now we decided to enrich their knoledge in geography of the world. Again we had many advantage on our side, compared to their schools. The students are in our center voluntary. They also know that after every lesson there are games prepared. We do not use their textbooks, but select the exact information, which could hold their attention and interest. The lessons are always with presentations. We project maps, photos, parts of documentary movies etc. – Virtually everithing that we say, we show them.
Mount "Chirpan", Livingston island, Antarctic ("Chirpan" is a town near Stara Zagora)
We do not alow part of the lessons that could be cosidered as boring. For example, many people would not be interested in a lesson only for Antarctic. But this changes if you see the name of your city, town or even village shot on place in the Antarctic. This is because if the Bulgarian explorers in the region, who offically named hundreds of places.
The new country South Sudan - created a week bofore our lesson about Africa.
We use additional motivation for holding the attention. After the lesson is finnished, there is a little test on 4-5 things from the lesson. But there are not bad grades. Even the test is voluntary, but we have never had someone who have refused it. The first three with thrue answers receive aditional points for the day and sometimes – another educational prize. For example, after a lesson for the European continent, the additional prize is on a computer game about the countries in Europe, the first winner to succeed quessing correct the countries. And because it is projected, all the others also benefit. After we have the winners, we give the correct answer, so this serves as a kind of conclusion and recall. Thus it is well remember becuase of the student’sattempt to guess it alone during the test.
We see that this educational method alway enrich the knoledge of the students and in some of them it creates a real interest to the subject.
Vesselin Kissiov
Participation in „Cultural Coach“ in Helzinki
Representative of the foundation team – Martina Staneva-Antonova participated for the second time a seminar on the long-term project Salto Cultural Diversity and several national agencies - The Cultural Coach Project. The project idea is through cultural coaches the EU program „Youth in Action“ to become more accessible to young people from cultural minorities in Europe. This time the seminar was called „Action seminar“ and as shown in the video, the participants – about 60 people – cultural and youth coaches from 16 countries took place in downtown Helsinki event that was promoting cultural diversity. Besides the public event, at the seminar were discussed topics such as: what is actually cultural minority, perceptions of participants on the problems with the inclusion of cultural minorities, what is Youthpass, Salto Youth Resource Centers and the range of the program „Youth in Action“.
A Celebration in Kalitinovo
Alyosha - A student from our center entertains the kids with juggling
The kids from the village of Kalitinovo
For the Children’s day – 1-st July, we organized a celebration in the near village of Kalitinovo, together with the local community center „Prudence“. The students from our center in the Roma district entertained the kids with games, song and juggling.
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