Tihomir Georgiev, a participant of the Initiative, a project working for the next generation of civic leaders, funded by the EEA Active Citizens Fund, shared with us the story of the Smokinya Foundation, which he created together with several of his friends. Both the whole civic sector and their team are currently organising useful online activities, waiting for the Covid-19 crisis to pass as soon as possible.
Read how an Erasmus+ volunteering organisation finds a way to operate in the pandemic.
„Smokinja“(Fig tree) Foundation was born after approximately 3 years (2013-2016) of voluntary efforts to promote educational and volunteer mobility within the Youth in Action and Erasmus+ programmes. In 2016, three friends from our student years and AIESEC alumni, decided to build on and expand the reach and impact of the activities and established the Smokinja Foundation.
The Foundation uses a heuristic approach - a method of empowering a person to discover or learn something for themselves - experientially or learning through experience.
In recent years we have formed a team of youth workers, trainers and volunteers. In 2018, we started accepting long-term volunteers under the Erasmus+ programme and the European Voluntary Service (EVS).
In 2019 we conducted 3 training courses on the following topics.) 2). Communication and coaching skills for youth workers; 3). Media literacy for creating short videos to promote the activities of youth organizations and social enterprises.
In addition, we held a youth exchange on "Home and belonging in today's world of globalisation and mobility“.
We want to create an international training and volunteer centre that will be a place for youth development under the mentorship of experienced professionals from our organization and other local and international partners.
We help young people to create their own projects from the ideas they have and also advise organisations on how to improve the design, writing and delivery of their youth projects. We partner with over 25 organisations from the EU and other countries.
In the last two months we have had a deployment and transformation - from a centre in the city of Sofia, we have decided to move to the town of Plovdiv. The emergence of the pandemic took us by surprise, but we found ourselves prepared to digitize our operations. We have always used different tools, platforms and applications for remote communication, collaboration and work.
During the crisis, we implemented several milestones. On 25 April 2020 we celebrated our birthday by organising an Online Open Day. Through our website, we gave anyone interested in the Foundation the opportunity to ask us questions via our web page.
We are happy to announce that an online training course in Slavonic languages, has began and it is moderated by our volunteer from Ukraine - Radostina.
Apart from that we are gathering volunteers who would like to join a vollunteers project in Athens for 12 months– which includes IT skills development and supporting vulnerable groups.