ZOV UK Newsletter 1, February 2005

Happy New Year and welcome to ZOV UK's first newsletter. It’s been a busy few months since we became a registered charity in June 2004. We’re now finding our feet as a new organisation, making contacts and developing our first projects. Our work is based around improving the lives of children living in orphanages and other similar institutions in Bulgaria. Many of these institutions are in a terrible state, suffering from funding deficits resulting in problems with both staffing and materials. The centres often are in very poor condition, with such basics as sanitation and heating unreliable or semi-functioning. The children suffer not only from this but from the lack of individual care and education that is inevitable when living in a large and understaffed institution. The fate of children with even a minor disability can be even worse, with neglect of their condition being frequent, either due to lack of training among staff, or simply a lack of funds. Often children are hopelessly ill-prepared for the outside world when they leave.

ZOV’s aim is to alleviate these problems through a variety of long-term projects which provide more than a temporary fix, and most importantly help the children both during their time in the orphanage system and during their transition to adult life on leaving. Initially our focus is on the Veliko Tǔrnovo region, where we have an existing network of contacts through our Bulgarian sister organisation, ZOV 2000. However, we are working in the long term to expand our reach across Bulgaria. The effectiveness of our contact network is particularly important to us because we prefer to work on the ground in Bulgaria, rather than through intermediary organisations. This largely removes the bureaucratic wastage that often plagues aid projects around the world, enabling a much larger proportion of the money donated to go directly to good causes.

Projects

Education Centre

ZOV UK’s first major project, the education centre in Veliko Tǔrnovo, opened in September. Children from orphanages and other institutions in and around the town are now having regular lessons in IT and English, improving on the limited curriculum available either in the institution or in the local state school. The project was initiated by ZOV 2000, in collaboration with OXAB, our associated student charity based in Oxford which provides volunteer support to orphanages and centres for street children across the country. ZOV UK is continuing to support the centre, aiming to fund transport to the centre for children in the more remote orphanages, further teaching, software licences, and the creation of a library of books in both Bulgarian and English. The centre is also functioning in the evenings as an internet café for local people. The profits from this business will be put back into the centre, paying for the basic maintenance of the centre, and reducing the amount of long term funding required to a minimum.

The centre has been generously supported by SOAS, Oxford University, and Hewlett Packard (UK). Other partners in the project included the DPS Party (Bulgaria)*, local construction firms, and the governors of several local orphanages in the Veliko Tǔrnovo area.

In the future, we hope to open a series of such education centres across the country, giving children the practical skills that they will need when they leave institutions, and are left to fend for themselves. Currently many teenagers that leave orphanages are unemployable due to their poor education and lack the life skills, as well as the stigma attached to them by society. It is often too easy for them to end up drifting into the criminal world, drugs and prostitution. The aim of the education centres project is to change that.

Other Projects

We are also fundraising to carry out further maintenance and improvement works at the Penyo i Mariya Velkovi Home, the central orphanage in Veliko Tǔrnovo. While parts of the orphanage have had repair work done in recent months, many of the bedrooms in other parts of the building still suffer from damp and cold. Many orphanage buildings in Bulgaria are in urgent need of repair.

Further projects are planned for 2005, including projects to provide work experience and practical skills to teenagers leaving institutions, although the details of these have not yet been finalised.

Membership Scheme

You will from the start of February be able to join ZOV as a member, and contribute to our work, for as little as £2 per month. We have now appointed a membership co-ordinator to our committee, Felicity Anscomb, who can be contacted by emailing members@zovuk.org.uk. The cost of membership will initially be just £2 per month, payable by standing order. Membership forms are available to download on the ZOV UK website, at www.zovuk.org.uk, and from Felicity.

City Club Event in March

We will be organising our first major fundraising event, a charity auction in conjunction with the Bulgarian City Club some time in March 2005. We are already in the process of lining up some great prizes, so watch this space for more details.

Fundraising

ZOV UK has been busy collecting in town centres around the UK, and more collections are planned in the near future. Our first collection, in Oxford in October, raised over £800 to go towards ZOV’s projects. In December, we organised further collections in Reading, Bath and Cheltenham, with more planned early in 2005.

Volunteer Opportunities

ZOV UK are always in need of volunteers, at present particularly for our street collections. If you’d be interested in taking part in a street collection, or organising one in your home town, please contact our fundraising co-ordinator, Hannah Walker, at fundraising@zovuk.org.uk.

Donations

Making a donation to ZOV is easy. You can choose which aspects of our work your donation goes to, and can pay by a variety of methods. You can find forms for a cheque or standing order donation on our website, at www.zovuk.org.uk, or you can contact us at info@zovuk.org.uk for more information.

Join our Mailing List

If you would like to be added to the ZOV UK mailing list, please click this link, and click ‘Send’ on the blank email that appears. If this doesn’t work for whatever reason, send us a blank email with the subject line “Subscribe” to us at info@zovuk.org.uk. If at any point you wish to unsubscribe, please send a blank email with the subject line “Stop” to the same address.

Contact Details

You can contact us at info@zovuk.org.uk; donations are welcome from members of the public. Alternatively you can use our postal address: