Mobile School Stolipinovo

Introduction

In 2015, ATD Fourth World sent two Volunteer Corps members to settle in Southeast Europe. This was in an effort to better understand the countries there and learn more about the experiences of the people living in poverty and those who work alongside them. It was here that we, Véronique and Benoît, took steps that let us discover the impressive commitment and solidarity that exists among those living in the most difficult situations in Bulgaria.

The Success

In Stolipinovo, a very segregated neighbourhood in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, we became part of the development of an educational and knowledge-sharing initiative, in the street, named the “Mobile School Stolipinovo”. Established in 2015, the mobile school ran until the end of 2023. During that time, the Mobile school successfully formed an inclusive educational community.. It benefited not just the children but the neighbourhood as a whole, bringing together school teachers, families, other members of the community, and other supportive persons.

Context

Joining those committed to the cause (Spring 2015)

On arriving in Bulgaria, we decided to join those who were already involved in work to overcome poverty. We lived and worked alongside them, learning from their initiatives. It was through them that we were able to connect with those living in the most difficult situations in Bulgaria. This was knowledge we wanted to share with the rest of Europe as the experiences of those in Southeast Europe are largely unknown.

We went at the pace of those committed to overcoming extreme poverty. We travelled by bus and were housed by them, which also gave us the time to get to know them better. We met many of their friends. Together we had long discussions which helped them gain a deeper understanding of what we were hoping to achieve. It was during one of these discussions that one of our hosts spoke to us about Genika Baycheva, a young woman whom she had once met, who was looking at access to culture as a means to overcoming prejudices and poverty.

Genika immediately agreed to meet us. After training in cultural mediation, she settled in Plovdiv and worked in the “Plovdiv 2019 Foundation” team, which led the city to be selected as one of two European capitals of culture in 2019. The motto of this ambitious program was “Together”, aimed at involving the largest possible number of residents from all the neighbourhoods of Plovdiv in the events to come. To signify their determination, the choice was made to develop the initiative in the largest segregated neighbourhood in the city of Plovdiv, in all of Bulgaria and the Balkan region: Stolipinovo.

Eventually, Genika chose to leave the team, not seeing how this initial intention to involve the residents of discriminated neighbourhoods would be put into practice. However, she continued to personally invest herself in the participation of all the inhabitants of Plovdiv, and in particular, Stolipinovo.

With a few young friends, who, like her, continued living and involving themselves in their country

(Nikola, with a doctorate in anthropology; Rossi, a young law graduate; and Dimitar, with a doctorate in sociology), she wanted to create ties with the residents of Stolipinovo. They would give themselves as much time as they needed to understand the community without the pressure of a deadline for presenting conclusive results.

Very quickly after our installation in Bulgaria in 2015, we began accompanying Genika and her friends on their explorations of Stolipinovo.

The Neighbourhood

Plovdiv is the second largest city in the country. At the beginning of the 20th century, a village was created north-east of Plovdiv to forcefully settle the Turkophone population, who had been driven out of the city centre, along with the Romani-speaking population. During the period of communism, 8-story buildings were built to house the poor populations of all origins. Though, after the fall of communism in 1991, certain mayors authorised families arriving from villages to settle in the informal housings or shacks, at the base of buildings, or in shared gardens. It’s Stoliponovo!

The history of this neighbourhood is reflected in its current diversity. Today, it is a large neighbourhood with 50,000 residents or more (no one knows precisely), composed of many sub-neighbourhoods. At least 80% of the inhabitants identify as Turkish-speaking gypsies, and around 15% identify as Roma and speak Romani. Others are originally from the Bulgarian majority or from other minorities. Their common ground is living in poverty — extreme poverty for some — but above all having experienced discrimination. Stolipinovo is an outlying district, segregated since its creation and neglected since the fall of communism.

The buildings are all severely run-down. Beyond the fourth floor, there is very little running tap water, a dribble at best. The sewers don’t always work. In some buildings, the cellars are flooded, and the structure of the building threatened. Some flats are very well maintained, others less so.

At the base of some buildings, small houses have been added, sometimes made from bricks and scraps. These are often used as spaces for small businesses, such as coffee kiosks.

There are also two improvised barracks areas (the correct term for slums) at the northern district, Kanal, and western district, Shumen. Some shacks in these housing zones are built of stone or brick, while others are made with wood, plastic, or cardboard. These shacks are often made up of one or two rooms for an entire family.

Generally speaking, the neighbourhood has been completely politically and administratively abandoned for the past 30 years. Small repairs have been made here and there, but no vision of urban development has been established. Consequently, the area has become increasingly run-down. The most blatant example of this is how the rubbish is handled. While the population in Stolipinovo is much larger than in the city centre, there are far fewer rubbish bins, and they are collected half as often. As a result, waste accumulates and remains on the ground.

As Bérul, a local carpenter, explained to us: “Politicians are purposefully leaving this neighbourhood in this state so that we are singled out.”

In Bulgaria, there are many negative prejudices towards minorities, even more so towards the residents of Stolipinovo, so much so that the media refers to the area as a “jungle”. It is unusual for young people from the city centre to come to this neighbourhood. Certain young people hide their involvement in the neighbourhood from their friends and family.

The Beginning: Taking the time to get to know the inhabitants (September 2015-December 2017)

When the weather was nice, the neighbourhood was quite lively. Many inhabitants were out and about, engaged in activities, talking to their neighbours, and exchanging news. You could often find people sat together on plastic chairs in little groups. The inhabitants are used to bringing their own chairs out to sit with others and chat together.

At the International Architecture Festival, which takes place each summer in Plovdiv, a Dutch artist was surprised by how the locals engage in conversation. During the week of the festival, she invited the participants of her workshop to interact with the residents of Stolipinovo, by walking around with a plastic chair to sit and converse as they do in the neighbourhood.

Genika, Nikola, and Rossi participated in that workshop, sitting on their plastic chairs to meet and talk with the residents of the neighbourhood. At the end of each discussion, they were asked to write key words or phrases from the discussions on the chairs. As the meetings progressed, the chairs were covered by phrases such as:

“I didn’t have shoes, clothes to study.”

“Education is everything. There are smart people around here.”

“Our biggest problems are the electricity, the water and the registration, the documents.”

From all these phrases, a rap was born, written and performed by the youth of the area.

This first initiative of writing a song together helped us build trust with the residents and allowed us to team up with Genika, Nikola, and Rossi. As a team we agreed upon the objectives for our time together in Stolipinovo. We wanted to meet the residents of this neighbourhood, to get to know them, and to involve them in improving the image of the neighbourhood and life within it. One of our motivations was to allow the district to be integrated into the whole process of making ‘Plovdiv 2019 — European Capital of Culture: Plovdiv “Together”’ a success, with all its inhabitants around the cultural initiatives.

With these goals in mind, we decided to continue building relationships of trust with residents using the “chair method”. There were six of us “strangers in the neighbourhood”, travelling around in two groups, one day a week. Being the oldest members of the team, we (Benoît and Véronique) provided a certain degree of security. This also helped in building trust with all the generations in the neighbourhood. Genika, Nikola and Rossi translated what the residents were saying for us, which was no small feat! But, as far as the locals were concerned, we were all “strangers to the neighbourhood”, Bulgarian or French, it didn’t matter. We felt this particularly when we met children and young people who didn’t always speak Bulgarian, but a Turkish dialect. After all, Turkish is the mother tongue of 85% of the neighbourhood’s inhabitants.

Simply spending time walking through this big neighbourhood was disorientating. We discovered that this is an area full of life and activity. A wealthier part of the district is made up of artisans, particularly blacksmiths. There are also barbers and plenty of shops related to weddings and parties. Other trades are more informal, such as street cooking or selling various recovered items, sometimes transported with the help of an old stroller. Others cut wood pallets into small pieces and sell them for firewood. Some collect anything that can be burnt, and salvage anything useful from rubbish bins. Another activity consists of collecting copper wire, untwisting it and then burning the plastic covering releasing many odours.

Some people have entry-level salary jobs, either working as garbage collectors or cleaners for the town or in factories in the region. The wages are very low and are not enough to support a family, but do provide health insurance for the whole family.

After each period spent in the neighbourhood, we spent time debriefing, so that we could tell each other what we had learnt and reflect upon how to move forward. Genika counted on us to provide hindsight for the team.

We began to regularly meet Nadia and Kamelia, who were always present at the entrance of their building, Berul and Nasco, who were both in their wood and glass workshops, Chenere, the barber, Mitko known as “the Chinese”, Vasko and Artin, youths from the neighbourhood. Later, there was Mamik at Kanal and Assen, Elena, Yanka and Todor at Shumen. They were reference points for us and allowed us to meet even more people that they knew.

In the spring of 2016, Mitko “the Chinese”, a 20-year-old resident of the area, introduced us to what he considered to be the most impoverished part of the neighbourhood. There was no running water and often no electricity, just extension cords on wooden sticks running for several hundred metres around buildings. Homes often consisted of a single room for the family. When it rained, it was difficult to get around the alleyways because of the mud and the enormous puddles. These were the two improvised housing areas, Shumen and Kanal.

We couldn’t go into Shumen or Kanal with the plastic chairs. After all, the inhabitants of these areas didn’t have any. Instead, they often sat on the ground on stones. So, we asked Bérul, our carpenter friend, to make us wooden blocks. This was also a way of getting him involved in the activity with us. It was with these yellow cubes that we went to meet the inhabitants of these informal housing areas. We did not sit on the cubes but would write on them after our discussions. The children also came to draw on them. It was through these discussions that we met Assen and little by little, he eventually became our contact person.

Our presence in the neighbourhood allowed us to share happy and sad moments with the residents. We were invited to family celebrations such as engagements, weddings and circumcisions. It was quite impressive to see the neighbourhood transform and embellish itself during these celebrations. We also witnessed the difficulties of raising money to send someone to the hospital, or to buy medicine, or even housing problems leading to evictions.

The question of access to school

As our meetings with residents progressed, the question of access to school and education became increasingly central to our conversations.

In Shumen, a man told us “My daughter is eleven years old, in year 6, and only knows how to write her name. But she passes from one year to the next. School is difficult for the children because they do not speak Bulgarian and the teachers don’t look after them. The teachers collect their salaries and that’s all. They are not interested in their work.”

We thought the matter might be more complicated than that. By meeting the teachers, we discovered that they were very poorly paid, with some having only having been trained with old schooling methods, and that they had to deal with lots of administrative and hierarchical constraints. On top of this, they have not been trained to teach students who do not speak Bulgarian when they start school.

Bulgaria’s education system is highly criticised. This concerns all children, but the consequences are magnified in neighbourhoods like Stolipinovo, where families face an accumulation of difficulties.

People spoke to us about the importance of education. Another father told us, “I want all my children to learn at school, to stop living as we do now.”

Over time we also noticed that very few children went to school regularly. Some didn’t even have school bags, just a notepad in their pocket with almost nothing written in it. Several 8 and 9-year-old children barely knew their Cyrillic alphabet.

This did not necessarily mean the children received no education. On the contrary, during our time there we learnt about the many skills and values of solidarity that exist in the neighbourhood which are passed on to the children. Unfortunately, this tradition of knowledge transmission is often overlooked by the majority of Bulgarians, and the school system. For example, Assen used to be paid under the table for work on building sites. He took his 15-year-old son there for a day to learn about the work. But the teachers reproached him because his son had missed school. For Assen, it was important, but he couldn’t explain why.

Petar and Stefan were 11-year-old twin brothers. When we would pass them, they always said ‘I’m working!’. They were very proud of their ability to ride a neighbour’s horse. They often carried wheelbarrows with rubble or helped with building a brick wall. They were simply proud to contribute what they could to the work of their families. They never went to school, but Petar would take time off whenever he could to attend the “Mobile School Stolipinovo”.

We also observed that on birthdays all the children in the neighbourhood received a slice of cake with no visible difference between them. Similarly, some Muslim residents gave the children cakes or juice every Friday. While speaking with the adults, they told us that this was normal for them: ‘Fridays are for giving’.

These preliminary observations and reflections made us realise that we needed to continue working on the issue of education through a concrete initiative. Drawing on what we had learned with the parents, we hypothesised that a school that engaged with children as closely as possible through their living environment, seeking to recognise and build on their pride in their work and their values of solidarity and collaboration, could reconcile families and the neighbourhood with the school.

The basics of the Mobile School

Genika, Nikola, Dimitar and ourselves had acquired a deep understanding and shared knowledge of the neighbourhood which was strengthened by the respect we earned from our interactions with the residents. The Plovdiv 2019 Foundation team then asked us to help run a week of workshops to prepare for future cultural events in the Stolipinovo district, in the run-up to ‘Plovdiv, European Capital of Culture’.

This week of workshops was a time for reflection and development of artistic projects for the ‘Plovdiv 2019’ project. We spent 6 days together, during which our team was responsible for presenting the results of the work to a group of around twenty architects and artists (Bulgarians, French, Germans, Belgians and Italians), and helping the participants discover Stolipinovo. This workshop gave us an opportunity to meet other people who wanted to get involved, even if they didn’t yet know how. This is how we met Magdalina Rajeva (Magi) and Anna Kalinova (Ani), both architects, who went on to become pillars of the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” and its initiatives.

Magi and Ani used to run an architectural workshop for children, making 3D constructions from various materials, or using paper and cardboard on small scale models. They primarily did this in wealthy schools in Sofia. Magi was the founder of an architectural workshop association for children in Bulgaria.

In the meantime, Genika, Dimitar, Rossi and Nikola also set up an association, as suggested by donors who told them it was the only way to gain recognition. The association was called Discovered Spaces.

After several weeks of dialogue, our three associations (‘Architectural Workshops for Children’, ‘Discovered Spaces’ and ATD Fourth World) submitted a project to the Plovdiv Foundation 2019 entitled ‘Mobile School Stolipinovo, discovering and releasing hidden potential’.

We were three associations, but one team.

We, Véronique and Benoît, gradually realised that Stolipinovo was exactly where we needed to be to truly understand and address the reality of poverty in Bulgaria. Through the team we had become a part of we got to learn about the action of other as well as contribute our own knowledge and experience. Eventually this is also what allowed us to become part of a major cultural project in the country: ‘Plovdiv 2019, Together’.

This was a tremendous asset in our first years in Bulgaria and something we could not have come to on our own.

Mobile School Stolipinovo (January 2018 — July 2023)

We chose to get involved in one of the two improvised housing areas, Shumen. From January to March, Genika and Nikola and us took time to visit all the parts of Shumen. We brainstormed with the parents we knew there on ways to get the mobile school initiative off the ground. They told us about their children, their concerns and school. We told them about our proposal to organise an outdoor activity for the children. We soon realised that until we started our program the parents could only see it as a vague concept.

In March 2018, the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” began with Magi, Ani, Genika, Nikola, Dimitar and us. Others became involved as we went on: Maria Dacheva, a photographer, students from Sofia or Plovdiv, friends of friends (Hannah, Maria…), and others after 2020.

From the beginning, we relied on Assen. While he didn’t take on a leadership role, or impose himself too greatly into the program, he became a friend of the team. That’s how he described himself. He worked intermittently, though when he was around, he’d come say hello or we’d go and talk to him. We often asked him for advice, and he also introduced us to others.

The activities

Once a week, we would begin by picking up the children from different parts of the area, while Magi and Ani set up the tables and equipment. We offered the children various individual and group activites. The activities encouraged them to create 3D models by exploring and playing with all kinds of materials: paper, cardboard, wood, clay, thread, crayons, etc.

Over the years, the children created a variety of geometric figures with wooden sticks, built castles out of cardboard, created a 3D map of the city, built Gaudi-style mud constructions and Leonardo da Vinci’s bridge at full scale, constructed sculptures using long bamboo sticks, cloth or large pieces of wood, and made wooden stools with the help of Berul.

As a result of the manual work they did in the architecture workshop, the children learnt how to communicate and work with each other, while also learning new manual and problem-solving skills. Some of the parents came to watch what was happening, and some young people too. They were interested and even participated from time to time.

The number of children who took part varied between 20 and 40, and on some occasions, there were as many as 60 children, and adults.

Adjustments and readjustments to the framework

Since the ages of the children ranged from 2 to 18, we initially thought that we should offer activities for all ages. In reality, what was most interesting was to propose two activities, without determining in advance who was going to do what. Older children sometimes took activities that had been designed for younger children very seriously. The fact that more than half the children didn’t go to school made them extremely curious, but also meant that there was no age limit to the activities.

We tried to create structure, but it wasn’t always easy. We also very quickly realised that we needed to offer time for sports for children who needed to move around. For some children, it was difficult to concentrate for more than 15 minutes on a manual activity. The best thing was to have a large skipping rope (5 metres) that 1 to 8 children could jump on at the same time. Afterwards, they returned to their manual activities or books.

We also realised that the most important thing was what happened during the activity, not so much the “finished product” the children could go home with at the end. In fact, the children had nowhere to put their work at home. More often than not, the models were destroyed at the end of the workshop.

Going inside in winter

Plovdiv is a city in southern Bulgaria, with a rather mild winter. But on two occasions, we had snow for 3 weeks. Unheard of!

The first winter, we looked for a place to set up without having to cross a street. It was a request from the parents with whom we had spoken. The owner of a restaurant behind the Shumen

district agreed to let us use his room every week. It was a modest room with 3 large tables which suited us very well. To obtain permission to bring the children to the ‘restaurant’, we had to be in

much closer contact with the parents. After the first session, the owner told us that he was going to look for other children to join: the ones who had come were barefoot! We explained to him that it was precisely the children who didn’t go to school that we wanted to work with.

Being in a room slightly changed the dynamics of the group. The activity was generally calmer than when it took place outside, and the children could sit down. After this experience, we needed to reflect with the whole “Mobile School Stolipinovo” team on the benefits we gained from setting up the school outside, in the middle of neighbourhood life. Eventually we found a middle ground between both options.

After the first winter, in March 2019, when we returned to the street, Magi had the idea of buying

a second folding table and 4 folding benches to allow the children to be calmer with what they were doing. This was also an opportunity to involve a local craftsman, who let us store the tables and benches that we used.

Building a team together

A few months after the start of the “Mobile School Stolipinovo”, a blanket with books was added. We had wanted to do this for a while, but we stuck to our strategy of moving at the pace of our friends. Genika felt that the reading activities should complement, not compete with, the hands-on artistic activities. So it was a good idea to bring out the books once we had launched the initial artistic activities. From then we ran both activities together. The big blanket, where the reading activity took place, became a quiet space, respected by the children, who took off their shoes before sitting on it. There, they discovered whole new worlds in the pages of the books.

Finding our rightful place

At the beginning, Ani and Magi wanted the living conditions in the neighbourhood to change quickly. This was the subject of many discussions between us. In particular, they confronted the local council to find solutions for collecting the rubbish, which was invading the whole area.

They were turned down by the local council, owing to a lack of political will. Tackling the waste problem in Stolipinovo would have been a completely different project. We had to realise that we were not here to change people, but to work with them, to offer opportunities that may or may not be seized. This is how Kalin, a health mediator from another extremely impoverished district of Bulgaria, put it to us. Realising was frustrating, but it also allowed us to stay focused on what we set out to accomplish. Nevertheless, the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” brought about many changes.

Ani often told us that we taught her patience and also the taste and ways of working with others.

Involvement of the local teachers in the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” (October 2019)

The International Workshop: a snapshot

To share our experience of the “Mobile School Stolipinovo”, and to discover what others thought of it, we organised an international workshop in Plovdiv. Over the course of several days in 2019, the event brought members of ATD Fourth World from France and Belgium together with people involved in education from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Serbia.

Workshop participants shared information about how to improve relationships between parents and teachers based on their own practical experience (e.g. from the Alternative Education Club in Bucharest in Romania, or from the project to improve links between school and home in the Fives area of Lille in France).

These exchanges again convinced us that it was essential to create an environment in which teachers and parents trusted one another, and that to do so, would require mediators. From the experiences we shared it was clear that meeting the challenge of education for all has to be a joint effort which takes advantage of the knowledge of parents, grandparents and neighbourhood residents; the expertise of the teachers; and the involvement of other partners. Taking part in the workshop made everyone involved in running the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” realise that we had to put effort into developing a good relationship with the local teachers. So that was our next move.

We made contact with Rossi Zlateva via ‘Teach for Bulgaria’, an NGO which offers trainees a two-year programme of support to become teachers, with a number of them going on to work in mainstream education. We had been in touch with them at the national level for three years but without making any local contacts. But after the workshop we finally did so by meeting Rossi. She taught maths at the Pencho Slaveykov school, which was the closest one to the shacks in Shumen. We told her all about the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” that we had been running for 18 months. We explained that we were looking for teachers to get involved by taking part in our weekly open-air sessions.

Rossi came on board and introduced us to four other teachers from her school. We first took them on a visit to the informal settlements which was not easy for them or for us. It showed the teachers first hand just what it is like to live there. Their initial response was to reprimand the parents for not sending their children to school and so we had to make certain things clear. We explained that if they were going to work with us, they would have to ignore the usual rule that a teacher had to report to the authorities any parent who ignored three consecutive requests to send a child to school. They accepted. We also asked them to think carefully about the ways in which they spoke to the parents and showed them how we did it. This initial interaction helped us understand why parent-teacher relations could be difficult and why it was not so easy to change them.

For the teachers to able to work with us we needed the consent of the school principal, as well as of the education authorities in Plovdiv. This was granted, which was a big step forward for us.

An important consideration for the school principal was the fact that Magi and Ani were involved in running the mobile school, as they were also facilitators of a workshop at her school. Another factor was that the project was built on the experience of an international movement. It was agreed that the teachers could, with the approval of their superiors, work in the informal settlements after school hours, that Rossi would report back on progress, and that the teachers would be paid a small supplement (as they are for any extra-curricular activities in which they take part at the school).

Mobile school twice a week

Rossi wanted to offer open-air maths classes to children in the streets. Stefan, an art teacher at the school, was also keen to offer classes. So we decided to run the mobile school twice a week — once with Magi, and a second time with the teachers and Genika, who acted as a link to the local community, with Rossi taking part in both sessions. The emphasis of the classes was not on theory but instead on knowledge transfer and exchange through practice.

The teachers typically organised a practical activity, involving drawing, colouring, and cutting out, around a chosen theme (like “spring” or “space” or “letters of the alphabet”). The results were then combined by the older children into a big mural representing the collective effort of all the participants.

The teachers made a successful request to be allowed to use the school premises for the mobile school during the wet days of winter. The principal even agreed to let children who were not on the school roll into the classrooms — something which is not usually permitted for insurance reasons.

Luckily the winter of 2019 was quite mild, and we only had to use the school premises a few times. On the first occasion we were just about to go in with about 15 children from the informal settlements when two of the least privileged, Vasko and Ivo, suddenly froze. They could not bring themselves to cross the threshold. Instead, they turned tail and ran off. They were too scared to go in. Another time a mother agreed to let her son attend a workshop despite the fact that he did not usually go to school. But only for an hour, and only after a lot of hesitation.

One team but with multiple personalities

• One of our challenges was navigating the fact that we were one team, with members who had differing personalities and played a variety of roles. We moved forward together, but we reacted differently. We could not expect the teachers to behave as the rest of the team did. This much was clear when they showed up prepped in their city shows ready to venture into the squalor of the most deprived areas and engage with parents in a respectful way — even if they did sometimes end up raising their voice at them!

On one occasion Benoit went with Rossi and Raflin (a new member of the team) to meet a mother and her daughter Maya who had expressed interest in going to school, only for Maya to say that she had changed her mind. Rossi told her in no uncertain terms, almost aggressively, that to go to school was her only way out of the mire. Benoit and Raflin were surprised by the strength of this reaction and had to step in to calm things down. We had a long chat about it afterwards, concluding that her status as a teacher allows Rossi to have such strong reactions, but that our different approach is a useful complement.

What we took from this is that the attitude of a teacher must not be allowed to stifle dialogue with parents and children.

We each had our own role. Magi and Ani provided a stable environment in which creativity could flourish. Their experience of architectural workshops for children meant they were excellent facilitators. Magi was the main point of contact for the children. For a long time, Magi was what they called any female member of the team!

Through Genika and Dimitar we were able to connect with Maria’s mother, with Assen, Yanka and Todor, and with many others.

As for us, Benoit and Véronique, we brought to the table our experience of ATD Fourth World programs and campaigns, together with a willingness to engage with parents and to allow ourselves to be guided by the children towards others with whom we had yet to reach out to. Something else that we advocated for was the importance of working together as a team, and we spent a lot of time on planning and debriefing.

We started debriefing sessions every week in which everyone took part in order to share problems and successes, to identify children that we needed to seek out at home, and so on. Nikola was instrumental in ensuring that the sessions were productive. Held in a local café in one of the more distant corners of the informal settlement they lasted an hour and a half each. When the teachers first got involved, we reviewed progress with them once a month.

Festival of Talent-Sharing: a joint initiative with parents

We organised a Festival of Talent-Sharing on three occasions, in October 2020, June 2021 and June 2022, inviting local parents, young people and artisans to take part by running workshops. Preparation took several weeks, in order to give facilitators time to specify what they needed, and for materials to be made ready, but it was time well spent.

We spread the word about the festivals widely. It was, amongst other things, an opportunity to engage with inhabitants who we knew less well, and to visit areas well off the beaten track. In so doing we discovered that a number of young people were living in the wastelands beyond the informal settlements: couples who did not speak Bulgarian well, if at all. We already knew one of them, a young man called Mitko. He now had a one-year-old child and had been living there since getting together with the mother.

Successes

The creation of an inclusive educational community

Looking at all the progress made with “Mobile School Stolipinovo”, we can say that we succeeded in creating an educational community for the children of Stolipinovo. The Mobile school not only brought together the teachers and families but also individuals from all walks of life, all involved in bettering the community. With our aim to reach all children, and all families, especially those most hidden, it was important to not be discouraged by the initial difficulties we encountered. Ultimately, this was an initiative that thrived because of the skills and aspirations of the neighbourhood residents. By recognizing the efforts of the parents and acknowledging the part they play in their community, we also allowed the children to be proud of their parents, and their environment. This self-esteem, this self-confidence, was necessary for learning.

It was at the 2019 international workshop in Plovdiv, during the sharing of initiatives, where this approach was formalized under the title of an ‘Inclusive Educational Community’.

When speaking about the mobile school to partners and other citizens in Bulgaria, people were impressed that it was possible to involve teachers in conducting outdoor workshops in the neighbourhood. This was the main success of this initiative.

Even though Genika eventually stopped being regularly involved, she said that the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” exceeded her expectations. She could never have imagined such a success: “We managed to build a bridge between families and the school, for children who were not able to go to school. Conducting regular workshops is important for them. The connection we have built with parents, teachers, and the team is also important. Maybe one day we will have architects in Stolipinovo…”

For us, Benoît and Véronique, it was the journey we made together with all the participants that ensured the long-term success of this initiative. It changed us individually and collectively. Of course, the fact that teachers were involved was very impressive along with the other team members’ involvement. Seeing us regularly, even when it snowed, left a lasting impression on the parents. “You came when it was snowing!” One child also once exclaimed, “But why do you keep coming here? Sometimes, children don’t behave well, but you keep coming to us… No one does that.”

The journey with the children

Did the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” improved access to education for a large number of children? It’s not possible to define the significance of the initiative in these terms.

The mobile school sparked a desire to learn. Over time, several children and adolescents began to ask members of the team for support in learning. Sonia was 12–13 years old. She was shy and did not speak Bulgarian well. She asked Ani to teach her how to read and write. Ani tried to give her more attention. She wanted to meet Sonia’s mother and see what was possible after the workshop, but this proved difficult to achieve. Eventually, her parents separated and Sonia went to live with her mother in a village for over a year. When we saw her again, her life was different.

Some of the children who were not enrolled in school, came to the school premises for a workshop in the winter. Even Vasko and Ivo managed to overcome their apprehensions about entering the school. But this did not bring them closer to attending the school. The gap was still too large.

Rossi told us that some children would go to school the day after the workshop in the neighbourhood because, at the end of the workshop, she reminded them that there was school the next day. But on other days, it was not as straightforward.

Julia, another teacher, told us that she relied on Stefan, a 14-year-old who was still attending school. Stefan was like an ambassador to the younger children. He helped out during the workshop and helped the younger ones go to school. But we also knew that he only attended school occasionally, mainly the days after the workshop.

A child, thanks to Rossi, started school at the age of 9 with her grandmother’s permission. She entered the 1st grade when she should have been in the third grade. It was good and challenging at the same time. Will she be able to keep up?

The children and young people were very proud to see their teachers in the street. Young people aged 18–20 would pass by and greet them. However, others remained strangers. Gradually, contact between the teachers and parents was also established.

Elena, a mother, said: “I don’t want to go to parent meetings. It’s not interesting, it’s useless. One of the problems is communication in Bulgarian. Every time, the teachers told me the same thing — that I have to speak Bulgarian with my children. When we go to parent meetings, we forget half of what the teachers said in Bulgarian before we even get home.” But two years later, we saw her talking to the teachers during the workshops.

All the workshop facilitators had something to say about the progress made by some of the children.

For example Magi spoke about Vasko and Ivan, “There is of course Vasko but also Ivan. I am proud of what he is doing today. Ivan, when he started, was very aggressive. Now, he likes to do everything we propose. When we suggest two activities, he wants to do both. For Vasko, it’s important to involve him, asking for his help with the younger ones. He needs to have real responsibility.”

Vasko drew out a lot of patience and ingenuity from all of us. It was always so beautiful to see him at 12–13 years old helping with the younger ones. He even advised us in the building of the workshops.

The journey with adults

Yanka, a mother of 8, often came to tell us that she appreciated everything we were doing. She often had a lot to do to provide for her family. But some days, she would stop and take time for herself to participate in the workshop.

It was also a moment of creation for her, and it was beautiful to see her apply herself. At times, she helped the younger ones with what they were doing. She also told us she wanted to help us, even though she did not have the time. We suggested that she should lead a workshop during the shared talent festivals. She chose what she wanted to do: manicures and hairstyles for girls. She was very conscientious in what she did and was able to lead her workshop well.

Edris’ grandmother was also often present. She came regularly with her grandson, finding him too young to leave on his own. Then she also started helping other children and found her place in the workshop. When her health prevented her from coming, her husband took over, even though he was more reserved.

One way of involving parents was by offering parent-child activities such as building stools. This, in particular, motivated everyone. These stools were prepared with Bérul, our carpenter friend from the neighbourhood. “Some people say that our neighbourhood is the toughest, but that’s not true. I grew up in Stolipinovo, I work with wood there. I try to teach children how to work with wood.”

Stepping back

On several occasions, we decided to interview parents and teachers about what education meant to them. We hoped to gain some perspective on this initiative, and to especially prepare for the 2019 international workshop.

Among the responses, parents also told us that what we were doing was good and that we should continue. A mother, Elena, told us that her 6-year-old daughter had a successful start to first grade. By attending the workshop, she got used to speaking Bulgarian and learned to use markers and scissors, “With the workshop, they learn something and they won’t forget what they do.”

“What you do with the children, how to play, how to do activities, even if it’s simple, it provides structure, discipline. We see that our children have made progress.”

A father told us: “For me, everything children can learn, like practical skills during the workshops, is important.”

With these responses we felt firm in our conviction to not focus the workshops on teaching reading and writing but instead on providing the children with lifelong skills and tools they can always use.

Magi told us that with the “Mobile School Stolipinovo”, we were bringing normality into the lives of the children. It’s normal for children to have the opportunity to draw at home. She did that with her own children. But for the children of Stolipinovo drawing at home was not as common. “I usually do architecture workshops, but we brought in other materials: earth, wooden sticks, not just paper and pencils. We allowed the children to play with them, and that’s important. We knew we didn’t have the opportunity to make them write. And even with the teachers. At one point, we had imagined that we could give individual lessons, but it was too difficult to organize.”

Rossi, who coordinated the teachers, evolved a lot in 2 years and gained a good understanding of what needed to be done. This became clear during one debriefing meeting when she said: “The socialization of children is important. Our goal is not to be efficient. Yes, it’s good if children can learn something tangible, but above all, the goal is to enable them to connect with others, to give them the desire to learn. It’s an opportunity to tell them to go to school, to give them the desire to go to school. That’s our goal, and it only makes sense if we go into the neighbourhood and not just into the school.”

The limitations, the shortcomings, the things to improve, the unresolved issues, the challenges.

How to enable children to access basic education?

How can children aged 9 to 14 who express an interest in school have access to it? There is no second chance school for children. Either they start in first grade, or they have to wait until they are 16 to go to adult schools. So, what is possible for Sonia, Maria, Petar, and Maya who, at some point, showed an interest in learning to read and write? How can this interest be sustained over time? How can the school adapt to all these children who only attend occasionally, and who, despite this, cannot write their name in Cyrillic? We know that we have not been able to fully address these questions even though they are very real.

The experience of the “Mobile School Stolipinovo” aligns with a national effort for access to education for all. How can an inclusive educational community be created that leaves no one behind? This national effort stems from reflections made in the 2019 international workshop in Plovdiv and from the work made by committed individuals on this issue at the national level during the following two years. Magi and Benoît were the driving forces behind this work, which brought together various partners from across the country (Sofia, Plovdiv, Sliven, Varna). Together, we realized that the academic challenges faced by some children were not unique to families from segregated neighbourhoods.

From these efforts an idea emerged to propose the presence of school mediators in all schools nationwide. This was based on the experience of the “Mobile School Stolipinovo”, as well as the experience of health and school mediators in certain segregated neighbourhoods. The school mediators’ responsibility would be to support teachers in the academic success of all children, to reach out to children and parents whose lives are too precarious to come to school, and to support the possibility for teachers to go beyond the school walls to make themselves known and recognized. Historically, such off-school premises meetings were already taking place with children about to enrol in the first year of middle school as teachers needed to ensure that all children were enrolled. But this practice is far from being a regular presence, a practice valuing the skills of families and neighbourhood residents. We also know that it is not enough to hire people: there is a whole process to go through, week after week in the neighbourhood, with children, parents, teachers, and those involved… It is the challenge of being dedicated to an initiative based on commitments.

Some names have been changed.