Angel works with his hands and he dreams of the stars. The seventeen-year old student from the Technical Professional Gymnasium “Nikola Yovkov Vaptsarov” in Radomir spends all of his spare time reading science fiction books. At the moment he’s reading Elit Nikolov’s “Extraterrestrial Thoughts about the Terrestrial”.
Angel Angelov is an ordinary boy like all his peers. In his spare time he plays tennis table. Unlike many of his peers, however, Acho (short for Angel) volunteers as part of the network of the “Arete” Youth Foundation , one of TSA’s grantees and partners. Currently, along with some of his friends, he’s planning his first volunteer projects to help people from the neighbourhood where he grew up.
He describes volunteering as a long path towards others, while also moving toward the most intimate parts of oneself. It is the desire to help someone else and to transform the world into a better place.
Angel’s path began in the summer of 2021. This is when he took part in the National Camp for Leadership Skills “Forward Together” – a key activity of “Arete” . These camps aim to help young people to acquire new knowledge, cultural skills and confidence, so that new Roma role models can emerge who will contribute to the development of their communities. Every year around 50-60 young people who are still in high school take part, with at least a third of them then continuing their education at the university level.
The camp increased Angel’s confidence in his own abilities. It gave him the push to believe even more in himself and his future.
“The whole camp was like an incubator for ideas and motivation! We gathered together from different parts of Bulgaria and each of us brought something different with them, which ultimately helped the rest of us. Together, we learned how to develop our leadership skills and then put them into practice in the tasks we were given!”
After the camp, Angel immediately found supporters and founded his own volunteer group. He’s part of the “Peers Help Peers” program of the “Arete” Youth Foundation, where along with his mentor, he will be preparing for his future exams. Speaking of exams, Angel’s dream is to study kinesiotherapy. He has chosen this degree because he doesn’t just wants to help people socially, but also physically.=
Angel would like to be remembered as someone who can always be trusted. What he wants to share is that everyone can be a good example to follow, as long as they have the right attitude and an unyielding desire for success!
Trust
