Children will help Ukrainian children in the donation campaign of the Ministry of Education and Science

For a week, Bulgarian students will collect donations for their peers in Bulgarian Sunday schools in Ukraine. The donation campaign of the Ministry of Education and Science starts tomorrow and will last until March 23 this year. It is implemented with the assistance of the Bulgarian Red Cross.

There are 63 Sunday schools in Ukraine. According to data from the beginning of the year, more than 10,000 children from Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia regions study there.

“The Children Help Children” Volunteer Initiative will collect durable food, hygiene items, flashlights, essentials, backpacks and other school supplies. The list was prepared by the Sunday schools themselves. You can see it HERE.

Donations will be stored in appropriate places in schools until the end of the campaign. On March 24 and 25, 2022, they will be delivered to the regional centers of the Bulgarian Red Cross in the country. Subsequently, the packages will be transported from the Bulgarian Red Cross to the Ukrainian border and accepted by the local Red Cross. The distribution for the needy will be taken over by 12 organizations of Bulgarians in the war-torn country. They declared to the Ministry of Education and Science their readiness to organize their own transport and distribute the products to the children and their families.

The Ministry of Education and Science will continue to support Bulgarian schools in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the year, they have received nearly BGN 1.8 million. The funds cover the salaries of about 400 teachers and purchase textbooks, teaching aids and electronic educational resources in Bulgarian language and literature, history and geography of Bulgaria.

91 applications were submitted by Ukrainians seeking or receiving international protection who want their children to continue their education in Bulgaria.

A total of 78 applications for enrollment of Ukrainian children in school and 13 – in kindergarten.

Most of those wishing to study are in the districts of Burgas (31), Sofia-city (30), Varna (7) and Blagoevgrad (5). Children and young people who want to study in our country are of different ages – from 3 to 17 years. In more than half of the 16 districts, no applications have yet been submitted.

A report by the country’s Regional Departments of Education shows that schools in the country have nearly 65,000 vacancies that can be filled by Ukrainian students. Most of the vacancies are in Varna, Veliko Tarnovo and Burgas. There are nearly 14,000 vacancies in kindergartens. The highest number is in the districts of Razgrad, Varna and Sofia. In the capital, the vacancies are mainly in the outermost districts – “Obelya”, “Nadezhda”, “Kremikovtsi” and the villages of Marchaevo and Vladaya.

The regional structures report that there are enough Bulgarian language teachers in all districts who could take additional Bulgarian language classes.

From March 4 this year Ukrainian citizens can enter the Regional Departments of Education applications for enrollment of their children in school. Adolescents are directed to a specific educational institution depending on the age, the class completed so far, the location and the desire of the parents.

The Ministry of Education and Science has set up a preliminary organization for submitting documents so that students can enter the classrooms as soon as they receive official status in Bulgaria and their health status is established.