The sixth edition of the book collection campaign – “Gift a Fairytale” – proved to be the most successful so far since the initiative began in 2019. The campaign started on November 1, 2024, and ended on December 31 with over 1200 books received as donations. They are intended for over 100 children from poor families, supported by our home visiting program, the Nurse-Family Partnership.
The field teams of the service distributed the received donations in January – as post-Christmas and New Year gifts, which brought joy and smiles to the children. Given their young age (up to 2 years old), this turned out to be the first encounter with the world of books and reading in general for many of them.
For families living in poverty, access to children's books is often severely limited. At the same time, reading books, as well as telling stories, is of utmost importance for the development of language skills and imagination from a very early age. That is why we at the Trust for Social Achievement remain inspired and determined, with the help of our donors and supporters of "Gift a Fairytale", to ensure that over 100 children in need each year have access to books, and their parents are supported in building skills with advice for including reading in daily activities with their children.
We are grateful to every individual "champion" who supported our cause with a donation, as well as to the collective efforts of employees from companies such as Progress Bulgaria, HP Inc., Technopolis and Praktiker. Our gratitude also goes to the children and parents from several kindergartens, including 68 Kindergarten "Ran Bosilek" in the capital, as well as to our friends from the Reading Foundation!
During this edition of the initiative, we expanded the donation options for the first time so that in addition to books, those wishing to support us had the option to donate funds through the donation button on our website and through the campaign on the DMS platform, where supporters were able to donate funds by sending an SMS with the text DMS PODARI to 17 777. Thus, supporters from the country and abroad backed “Gift a Fairytale" with donations of over 2100 BGN, intended not only for books, but also for baby materials of basic necessity for the poorest families in our home-visiting service.
After the official end of "Gift a Fairytale" for 2024, the DMS campaign remains constantly active under the motto "Gift Care" – again via text message DMS PODARI to number 17 777. It will allow us to continue raising funds to cover the basic needs of the poorest parents and children, so that our further work with them on building parenting skills and raising healthy babies will remain possible.