Afterschool Program for Children at Risk

The summer was great because we were together again with the children! In June we welcomed new children into our Bulgarian language program – some newly arrived refugee children who wanted to learn the language of their host country but also a couple of Bulgarian kids who wanted to develop their mother tongue fluency. It’s amazing how children speaking different languages can communicate, learn from each other and spend time together. During the regular educational activities children worked with many texts and improved their reading and writing skills. Also, they used various materials to learn how to implement projects and prepare presentations. In addition to these activities, we organized some creative classes for those kids who really love drawing and art. Usually, as a part of the summer program, we organize our traditional summer camp but that was impossible to do this year due to the spread of COVID-19. But that doesn’t mean that there were no adventures left. There is no kid who doesn’t like animals – therefore we organized horse riding for the children in our afterschool classes during the summer program. They rode twice a week and those who participated regularly can already ride independently. Horse riding motivated them to put more efforts in learning and helped them to overcome some communication problems. It also inspired them to develop their talents. The other thing which children enjoy a lot is biking. In order to encourage kids to spend more time outdoors one of our volunteers ran a small donation campaign to repair the bikes of the family-type accommodation centre. This allowed children to go cycling in the park and have a great time together!

Due to the COVID–19 pandemic Reachout’s center was closed in the last three months. We reached the children online, talked with them through video calls and provided individual speechsessions via Skype. The insufficient number of computers didn’t allow us to provide them direct educational support. Every week we prepared materials and sent them to the staff of the residential care centers.

Meanwhile the children whose parents are with low levels of education more often asked for homework help.

We also used the time to prepare our new initiative called Summer stories with horses. We created special educational materials which will be used by the children who are going to participate in all new activities starting in the beginning of July. We believe that horse riding will bring a lot of fun and new positive emotions to the kids after the long period staying at home.