The good Italians

With hands in his pockets, Viktor stands passively and watches the guests, scattered outside the social care home’s building, speaking an incomprehensible – to him – language. He observes their gesticulation, glancing over their black overcoats and shining shoes. All formally dressed, the guests’ lively chatter show their genuine excitement and impatience for the official ceremony to begin. 

Viktor is in fourth grade and has spent the last five years in the Mladen Antonov Home for Children Deprived of Parental Care (HCDPC) in the village of Totleben, near Pleven. Recently, after some remodelling and renovation, five vocational rooms were created there with the help of Italian businesses in Bulgaria and the non-governmental international organisation Amici dei Bambini (Children’s Friends). On March 5 2009, all parties involved gathered to mark the results of this partnership and joint efforts in the name of the children.

The rooms are spacious, brightly lit and comfortable. Nataliya Nedkova, the home’s principal, explains that instead of leaving the old bedrooms, she and her Italian partners decided to give the children a learning space, where they could acquire useful social skills.

"The main problem in such institutions is not so much the lack of finances," Nedkova says, sitting in her office. The paint on the walls is flaking off, but she says that there are other burning issues waiting to be solved. "I think that while looking after those abandoned children, the state creates nothing but consumers. It is a problem of all people in need; they expect the state to take care of everything," Nedkova says. The principal says that simple things such as washing clothes, turning on the microwave, or even making a sandwich, prove impossible tasks for most of the children. "Because, while living in the home, someone else had done it for them, someone from the staff."

More than 100 children, aged three to 18, live in the HCDPC in Totleben. All students attend the village’s school to receive the obligatory secondary education. This is the only such institution in the Pleven region, but the children come from Vidin, Silistra, Yambol and other parts of the country. Most of them have not been given up for adoption, but are still there because their parents do not have the means to provide for them, living in excruciating poverty themselves.

Viktor comes from Dolna Mitropoliya, a small town in northern Bulgaria, not far from Pleven. He announces proudly that come May, after the end of the school year, he will be "discharged" from the home. "I like it here, but once I get out, I’m going to go with my dad to Greece," Viktor says while keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. The boy reluctantly explains that he has four more siblings, as if in some elusive way this fact explains why he’s living in a social care home.

"Hey, Francesco, what’s up?" A youngster and one of the guests give each other a high five and they both laugh but the conversation goes no further, for there is a language barrier. But friendship is known to have no limitations as they continue to speak – one of them in Bulgarian, the other in Italian.

Francesco Fedi is the Amici dei Bambini co-ordinator for Bulgaria. In 1999, the organisation opened its first office in Pleven and, some years later, another one in Sofia. Their project in Totleben is called The Aroma of a Family. In essence, their main goals are to encourage a reunion between the child left to be raised in an institution and its biological or extended family. Amici dei Bambini also aims to apply alternative educational practices to stimulate each child’s development and prepare them for life after the home.

The children in Totleben will be offered art and computer classes as well as instruction on how to look for and find a job outside the small community they are accustomed to. The organisation also helps with staff training in partnership with the New Bulgarian University in Sofia.

Classes at HCDPC will be taught by teachers commuting from Pleven with travel expenses and a small remuneration covered by the Advisory Committee of Italian Entrepreneurs in Bulgaria – CCIIB (Comitato Consultivo dell ‘Imprenditoria Italiana in Bulgaria). The same entity sponsored the renovation and refurbishing of the five rooms, which amounted to about 35 000 euro. CCIIB unites Italian businesses operating in the country, and facilitates new initiatives of economic partnership between the two countries. On its website the committee states that it has more than 200 members with investments from agricultural and trade sectors through to renewable energy and real estate. Italian business in Bulgaria secures close to 20 000 jobs and has more than 1.5 billion euro direct investments, according to information posted on the website.

So, in one of the rooms, a small orchestra of 10 pupils is on stand-by and waits for Nedkova, the principal, to give the confirming nod. And finally, he does. The first accords of the 16-year-old Boris playing the guitar are heard, together with the rhythmic drumming of Ivailo, who remains almost invisible behind the singers.

 "Come to Totleben...for we are children with joyful hearts..." goes the refrain of their song over and over again.

"I came here when I was nine, now I’m 14," Ivailo says after the recital the band performed for the salute of all guests. "I lived with my parents before... they come to visit me here often, because our village is not too far away from Totleben... Yes, I get sad at times...but now all I want to do is play the drums... I love music."