• Over the last year the growth and development of the 16 plus Youth Day Care Center continued with core financing provided by the Oak Foundation, Geneva and the Italian foundation ‘Nando Peretti’. This has enabled us to develop a number of new programs that better cater to the needs of the young people at risk. Accordingly, the Center continues to offer basic care for the needs of the youths by providing daily meals, shower and laundry facilities, legal aid and medical care. Much more active during 2007 was the team’s street work, with several social workers keeping daily contact with the young people on the street, discussing and addressing their most acute needs and encouraging them to make regular visits to the Center.
  The activities of 16 plus are organized around several main programs – development of social and life skills, professional qualification, health and sex education, legal consultancy and advocacy. In each of these areas, 16 plus has developed new approaches and achieved remarkable successes in its work with more than 160 young people during 2007. With the Center’s help, more than 50 youths enrolled in professional skills courses to become qualified construction workers, hairdressers, landscapers, seamstresses. Many obtained professional certificates, thus increasing their competitiveness in the fast growing labor market in Bulgaria. One of the most successful programs ‘My Rights’, recently initiated with funding by the Global Fund For Children, allows the young people to develop an awareness of their basic rights and duties as Bulgarian citizens, and deters their involvement in petty crime. We have also achieved excellent results in developing parental skills through our ‘Family Planning’ program that is one of the most popular and included more than 30 young mothers and their babies. As a therapy, we also reached out to our young people by involving them in arts, dance and music several times a week. We are happy with the achievements of Nayden Yankov, one of our star pupils, whom we helped record a music CD titled ‘My Children Are Crying’, featuring traditional Roma songs of folklore. The talent of Nayden was recognized and he was invited to join a professional Roma Orchestra for a concert in Budapest. We are grateful to the Sofia International Women’s Club which provided half of his travel expenses and allowed him a unique chance to develop as a musician.
  Just a few months ago, a children’s playground, complete with swings and a sandbox, was built in the courtyard of the center and last summer the staff and the young people joined forces to give the Center a fresh and joyful paint job. It looks great now, do come and visit!
• We still continue to support through donations the dear to our hearts ‘Faith, Hope and Love’ Center, now under the management of the Sofia Municipality. The Center went through a difficult period of adaptation as some of the most experienced staff departed. In the last year however, the FHL regained dynamism in its work, providing protection and quality services for street children. The most important change was the reintroduction of street social work to provide greater protection and care for those who need it the most. We were able to secure funding by the Association of Francophone Capital Cities to completely refurbish the building which allowed us to create a space for a special ward to deal with our most urgent and difficult cases. As in past years, with our support and with the support of generous donors, more than 30 children spent some happy days in a summer camp in the mountains, and we continue to eagerly seek help for the FHL Center.
• Last year, we completed the implementation of our three-year Matra-funded project for building life skills of children living in institutions in Gabrovo, Sliven and Stara Zagora. The close cooperation with our colleagues from the International Child Development Initiatives in the Netherlands was most rewarding and allowed us to build up our expertise in this field. The project’s core group of 28 trainers transferred their skills and knowledge to more than 240 social workers, thus becoming a real catalyst for changing the environment in which children in institutions are raised. With our support, eight small projects, involving over 1,200 children, were implemented to develop the communication skills of the children inside the institutions as well as friendships with their peers in the community. With all these children attending the closing ceremonies of the projects, featuring various concerts and artistic exhibitions, were the hottest tickets in town, widely covered by the media!
  This work also attracted the attention of childcare experts from Romania who visited us in October and established useful contacts for further cooperation. In January 2007, we produced the Bulgarian edition of ‘Newly Emerging Needs of Children’ a seminal book by Niko van Oudenhoven and Rekha Wazir, outlining the challenges, problems and opportunities confronting children in today’s swiftly changing world, which has been distributed to childcare experts and social workers all over the country.
• Our Drug Prevention Program also had a successful year. With the support of the embassies of the Netherlands and of Norway we reprinted 18,000 copies of our popular ‘Guide for parents and teachers. What we should know about drugs’ which, according to the shared opinion of specialists is the best handbook on this subject published in Bulgarian. Copies of the Guide are distributed to school boards, PTAs, municipalities, police units, NGOs and individual citizens. The testimonials we receive are moving. ‘You saved the life of my fifteen year old son!’ – wrote a parent. – My gratitude in immense for having received the Guide! May it get in the hands of thousands of other concerned parents like me.’ Indeed, the demand for the Guide is huge and continuous. Any help that we can get to publish more copies will be much appreciated!
• Driven by our constant concern for a brighter future for Bulgarian youth and the deterioration of the quality of the Bulgarian educational system that we witness, we organized, together with the Ministry of Education and Sciences, a two-day conference on the remarkable Finnish experience in high school education. A representative from the Finland National Board of Education and a Helsinki high school principal shared their experience with 70 Bulgarian educational experts, school directors and teachers from all over the country. It was an inspiring exchange of ideas and knowledge, with the likelihood of a follow-up through the signing of school-to-school cooperation agreements between Bulgarian and Finnish schools.
• For the second consecutive year, the contest for the Panitza Civic Honor Prize (www.nbu.bg/panitza) took place. It builds on the achievement of our Excellence in Journalism Awards and is managed by a special fund established within the New Bulgarian University. It aims to recognize individuals that set a worthy example of public conduct and who, through their actions, consistently and robustly assert the values of high moral integrity and decency, proactive and selfless civic positions, public dialogue, humanism and tolerance. In 2006, the nine-members jury comprising highly respected journalists, lawyers, politicians and academics, awarded the Prize to Malina Petrova – a committed film director and a civil rights activist in the late 1980’s, who now focuses her energies in the cause of orphans and children at risk. As we write these lines, we are awaiting the decision of the jury for this year’s award.
• The Bulgarian School of Politics (www.schoolofpolitics.org) had an eventful year as well. Founded by us and the New Bulgarian University six years ago, and funded by the Matra program of the Dutch government, it continues to train young civic and political leaders across the political spectrum according to the values enshrined in its mission – political pluralism, tolerance and open dialogue. For us a huge satisfaction has been the official recognition of the School and the support we received for it from the National Assembly of Bulgaria. The School is a founding member of the Network of Schools of Political Studies operating under the aegis of the Council of Europe and in the beginning of July 2007, its fifth graduating class received their diplomas during the Strasbourg Summer University of Democracy. In December, the School kicked off its new scholastic year under the guidance of Julian Popov, the new Chair of the Board, with Dimi Panitza continuing to provide his leadership to the Board as Honorary Chairman.
• Two years ago, we co-founded a new organization, the Institute for Studies of the Recent Past (www.pastto.org) It is an independent center for academic research and analysis which unites bright young minds to work on the period from the Communist seizure of power in the 1940’s to the end of the 1980’s , still a black hole in Bulgarian history. Our plans for the fast growth and development were reached and in October the Institute published its first book ‘The Lightning Does Not Hit the Bush’, featuring moving personal stories of ordinary people and their lives under communism. In December, an international conference titled ‘The Silence Over Communism.What should we do?’ was held in Sofia and was widely covered by the media. The Institute now has more investigative studies in the pipeline. They include the power structures of the communist party, the role of the secret police (DS) inside the regime, the governmental policies in the field of culture and propaganda, the true causes for the economic collapse of the communist system, etc. Please help the Institute continue its worthy and essential work!
• In the same line, and in view of the planned state visit of Russian President Putin in Sofia early next year, the Foundation recently launched a campaign for the return of the archives of Bulgarian state institutions which were seized by the Soviet Army in September 1944 and are still being held in Moscow. It is an Internet-based petition supported by people of all walks of life throughout Bulgaria and is addressed to the President, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, insisting they make it an important issue in the bi-lateral relationship with Russia during the coming year.
• FDBF continues to support the Milosardie Hospice (www.hospice-miloserdie.hit.bg) in Sofia. Modeled after the international Mother Teresa Hospices, this noble endeavor provides shelter, food, clothing and medical assistance to Sofia’s elderly and terminally ill. Additionally, FDBF also supported the refurbishment of the bathrooms of a cardiovascular surgery ward at a leading Sofia hospital, thus improving hygienic conditions for its patients.
• FDBF also provided modest support towards the publication of several books and the making of TV programs on social issues.
• Finally, the FDBF is still actively involved with the work of two other organizations founded by us here – Outward Bound Bulgaria (www.outwardbound.bg) and Junior Achievement Bulgaria (www.jabulgaria.org) Through the years they have grown stronger and now achieve wonderful results in their work with the young – developing life skills, initiative, creativity, responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen. Do visit their websites and help them if you can!

Dimi and Yvonne Panitza, Founders