The economic activity of NGOs
as an instrument for social change
Interview of Ruzha Doncheva for BDF
The December donation bulletin of the Bulgarian Donors Forum is for the civil society organizations that have decided, among other battles, to fight another one – to develop business activities in a highly competitive environment. Ruzha Doncheva, Program Director of Dokova and Dokov Foundation for Future, joined this issue to tell more about the organization’s experience, successes and problems.
Children with special educational needs have potential. Someone just needs to help them unleash and show it. That’s what we do at the “Smiles” Child Development Center, which we created and fully fund. We have chosen to work with these children because the support for them in our education system is very limited and they cannot really be fully included with the rest of their peers. At Smiles we fight against this unfair inequality, we make efforts to overcome the isolation of ‘special’ children, to increase their confidence and self-esteem, to develop their social, cognitive and motor skills. Equally important is to promote positive attitudes and understanding of differences in the community. Quite naturally, the parents of “our” children have also started to willingly get involved and support the activities of the centre.
In the art workshops of “Smiles” children and their parents do not just develop and have fun, they create drawings with a cause. This is how the idea of making an e-shop to sell products to support children with special needs was born. We invested our own financial resources for the implementation, but for the registration of the activity as a social enterprise we received support from the Regional Centre for the Development of the Social Economy in North-Eastern Bulgaria at the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy – the focal point in Varna.
The e-shop for products with a cause and the sales of monthly cards for participation in various group activities with a cause are the main sources of income from our business activities, which we use to supplement the funding of the projects of the “Dokova and Dokov for Future” Foundation. The main difficulties along the way are related to marketing – how to get more people to know about our e-shop and support our social enterprise. In the future, we will focus more on this, while expanding and multiplying the cause products we offer.
Revenue from our social enterprise is far from the most important thing. By selling the drawings of children with special needs, we share in their success, showing how talented they can be if given the chance to develop and express themselves. This is how we fulfill our core mission – to do good, to give hope, to help where faith in good has been lost.