Foundation “For Our Children” is a Bulgarian NGO which, since 1992, has been doing its best to ensure that no Bulgarian child spends the first years of their life in a care home, and to find a safe and loving family for every child.
In Bulgaria, every year approximately 1000 children are separated from their parents, most of them as soon as they are born. Thus they end up behind the walls of social institutions. Regardless of the fact that Bulgaria is a member of the EU, it has the highest percentage of children separated from their parents in Europe, and the main cause for that sad fact is poverty, followed by lack of support, social isolation and child disability. Bulgaria is the poorest EU member-state – 49% of the total population and 52% of the children are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
Even today over 1500 children still live in social homes, according to statistics. What the foundation “For Our Children” sees behind the statistics is 1500 lives deprived of any chance for the future. Because life in an institution is only shared – shared toys, shared clothes, shared care and attention. The institution does not nurture individuals. Children there spend their days in loneliness and isolation, deprived of the true essence of childhood. Most of them lag behind in their physical and mental development due to the lack of individualized care, attention and, what is most important for every human being, love. When these children leave the institutions, they face a hostile world which cannot accept them and offers them only one thing – social exclusion.
Foundation “For Our Children” cannot remain indifferent to this shocking reality, for 25 years now, our team has been focusing its efforts on reaching the most vulnerable and deprived children through its 4 support centers on the territory of Sofia and Plovdiv, where it provides prompt professional, social, emotional and moral support to both the children and their families.
In Foundation “For Our Children”, there are almost 60 highly qualified and motivated specialists – social workers, psychologists, physiotherapists, family counsellors and therapists, specialists in early childhood development; they all support the children and their families, in keeping with the most innovative and successful world practices in the social and health care sphere.
Since it started operating, with the assistance of its partners, one of them being the company “Compass”, Foundation “For Our Children” has provided support to over 9000 of the most vulnerable children and families in Bulgaria.