Sky Lanterns Over Plovdiv in Support of Foster Care

Dozens of people in Plovdiv took part in For Our Children Foundation’s event title Draw Childhood showing their support for foster care and preventing child abandonment. The event marked the end of the foundation’s campaigning for new foster parents of children aged 0-3.

Plovdiv’s Rowing Channel was where those who care for the children made drawings of what happy childhood looks like and wished it to all those who live without a loving family to provide them with care and affection and the environment they need to grow up like everyone else.

Ivanka Shalapatova, executive director of For Our Children Foundation thanked all attendees for showing their commitment to the Foundation’s appeal that no children in Plovdiv and the region spend their childhood in a social institution but rather they all live in a secure family environment and develop their full potential. “We are here tonight to mark the end of the foster parents campaign in Plovdiv, share our commitment by drawing and making some good wishes to underprivileged kids and above all consider what each of us can do so that there is a family for all 130 children in Plovdiv who will be going to sleep tonight alone again with no parents beside them. There are just 25 foster families in Plovdiv, if we cannot be one of them but we know someone whom we can encourage to become one let’s do it today as children can’t wait.”

The foundation’s bighearted cause was supported by famous local artist Atanas Hranov as well as by Desislava Shishmanova, head of the Bulgarian National Television’s Plovdiv HQ, business people, public figures and artists from Plovdiv and Asenovgrad. Everyone wrote a message to disadvantaged children and lanterns of hope were sent up in the sky.

The event was also supported by volunteers from the Bulgarian Red Cross in Plovdiv.

About For Our Children Foundation

The foundation introduced foster care in Bulgaria in 1997 as an alternative to living in a social institution.

In the first half of 2014 alone, the foundation provided support to 359 children, 9 of them disabled, living with their biological and foster families. In the same period social workers prevented the abandonment of 125 children and worked with 90 more to secure early child intervention, a service for children aged 0-3 with developmental delays. In the first 6 months of 2014, 11 children were accommodated in the foundation’s Family House in Sofia and 5 of them now live with their new moms and dads; 169 families attended a childcare training course for parents that helped them prepare to welcome their foster kids.

By the end of June 2014 social workers in Plovdiv were successful in preventing the abandonment of 46 children. 9 new families have applied for foster care with the For Our Children Foundation in Plovdiv’s branch and 10 kids now live with their foster parents.

For more on For Our Children Foundation please go here.