Prepare Bulgarian Kids for the Jobs of the Future

As the 2020/2021 school year draws to an end, we reflect on a dynamic, challenging and successful one. Your continued support allows us to deliver on our mission to train Bulgarian kids for the jobs of the future and improve our performance and impact every year.

Our shared achievements

With your help, we expanded our reach during the 2020/2021 academic year:

• Launched 113 cohorts in 33 cities and villages across Bulgaria, compared to 102 cohorts in 25 settlements last year,
• Enrolled over 2,500 students, compared to 2,000 students last year.
• Delivered our programs in partnership with 65 contractors, in comparison with 50 last year.
• Expanded our network of supporters, attracting a larger number of individual donors, private companies, foundations, and municipalities.

During this school year, following the official healthcare guidelines to prevent the spread of Covid-19, our programs were held online. The pandemic has had a significant impact on educators and students, and our team worked tirelessly to ensure that programs ran smoothly. Adapting the entire process to online delivery, we made sure that students and contractors were well-supported.

Here’s what Valya Marinova, one of our contractors in Pazardzhik, shares: “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity to be part of the Telerik Academy School’s team this school year. Although I had some doubts at first, I knew I made the right decision to join the initiative when I met the team for the first time during the teacher training last July, and then meeting my students in October. The classes based on Telerik Academy School’s program are among the most gratifying lessons I teach this school year!
Thank you for the opportunity, for the pleasant and fruitful work, for the support, for the speed and expertise with which you answer every question or problem that arises.”

When it comes to implementation, we introduced and continue to work on key improvements to our programs, including upgraded learning materials and digital tools.

Currently, our cohorts are at the end of their training and soon we will be able to congratulate our students and teachers with the successful conclusion of the school year and share their accomplishments with you.

In our efforts to further engage our community and differentiate our sources of funding, we launched a total of nine microdonation campaigns aimed at several distinct groups:

• parents of our current students, split into five city-specific and one general campaign,
• employees of a software company,
• a local community,
• the members of a coworking space.

To test the potential of such campaigns, we created individual web pages with relevant information and donation appeals and crafted supporting communication strategies for each one. Currently, some of the campaigns are still ongoing, but we are seeing very positive results in terms of engagement and contributions and will further explore such approaches. We already have more than 220 new individual contributors and the collected funds will support the training of over 80 children.

Dedicated to continuous improvement and data-based decision making, we are currently working in cooperation with our main donor, the America for Bulgaria Foundation, on an external evaluation. An expert organization is examining our work and impact over the years, and we are eager to learn the results and share them with you once the process is complete.
In case you understand Bulgarian, you could browse these interesting articles from the past school year:

• Rositsa Dekova, mother of one of our students, shares how our classes have supported his interests and abilities
• Tsvetana Dimitrova, one of our contractors who has been with us from 2011, discusses her passion for teaching the skills of the 21st century
• Our supporters from Burgas share why it is important to champion children’s development and why they decided to join our fundraising campaign

What lies ahead

Looking towards the 2021/2022 school year, our focus is to expand our reach geographically, providing opportunities for a growing number of students, ensuring financial support from a wide array of sources, and polishing our existing programs.
We are planning an extensive and exciting summer training program for our growing network of teachers, where we will present the improvements to programs and systems we are preparing for next year.

Our goal for the next school year is to launch 130 cohorts in 35 settlements in Bulgaria. This would give 2,700 students the opportunity to receive completely free, high-quality digital skills training that would prepare them for the jobs of the future.

To ensure we can achieve such growth, we are carrying out a campaign to attract the necessary support by expanding our current and creating new partnerships. Thanks to an overwhelmingly positive response, we managed to establish relationships with a number of businesses, individual donors and organizations. At this point, we have secured 110 cohorts out of the 130 we are aiming to launch. We would happily welcome suggestions for prospective donors and partners in the face of private companies, individuals, local administrations, schools, teachers, and local facilities who would support our cause. Let us know if you have any ideas!

Your continued support and engagement make it possible for us to provide Bulgarian kids with equal access to digital skills training, improving their abilities and opening doors to their future development. Thank you for your valuable contribution!

During the current reporting period in Telerik Academy School (TAS) we welcomed the new and hopefully successful year 2021.

During the current school year, conditions change dynamically, and to mitigate unforeseen circumstances we are in constant communication with all local partners and update the status of each cohort regularly, taking ad-hock measures. To ensure full delivery of the programs, we have encouraged teachers to be even more flexible in timing and style of teaching and are ready to prolong the training delivery period till July 2021 or organize intensive training-camp-type of classes during the spring and summer holidays if the conditions make this the most viable option.

Based on the current health measures and local conditions, we have:

• 87 cohorts conducting our programs in an online format.
• 4 cohorts with status “waiting” and will start as soon as possible.
• 14 in-kind cohorts delivered in an online format.
• 8 cohorts for which the conditions do not allow delivery during the current conditions and will be delivered next school year.

We have evidence that even the best quality programs when delivered online have higher drop-out rates. That is why we anticipate such a tendency for our cohorts as well. To mitigate this risk as much as possible we instructed teachers to bring down the pace of teaching, invest time in teaching students’ critical skills which will be needed for the successful online implementation of the programs, allow for gradual immersion in new concepts and monitor children’s individual development.

What's Next

Great things are ahead of us. We are happy to announce that despite the turmoil in all spheres of life we have a strong conviction in the ever-growing need for our trainings and manage to address not only ad-hock needs and changes but also look at the greater picture and put strategic efforts in our development.

In these uncertain times, we strive to plan ahead and already prepare for the implementation of our next school year, upgrading our program materials, teacher trainings, and digital tools. In February we launched our 2021-2022 campaign for new cohort sponsorships around the country. We are looking to expand our current and develop new partnerships that will allow us to provide even more children with access to our programs. Aiming at an increase in our student body of 20% we welcome suggestions for prospective donors and partnerships with local administrations, schools, teachers, and local facilities who would support that growth. You have an idea for a city with great potential supporters, where we can open new cohorts? Let us know!

Further developing our funding base, we are going to conduct microdonation campaigns aimed at the parents of our students. For this purpose, we are currently creating individual web pages with materials and donation campaigns for 5 cities, which we will launch as a pilot and hope to share with you soon.

Motivated by our students’ achievements, despite the online format of teaching, we continue our work for the successful completion of the school year and anticipate the final projects of the pupils in our programs. Also, we are currently working on an external evaluation of our work and impact over the years. Like our donors, we will update you on the results as soon as they are ready.

We’d like to take the time to extend our utmost gratitude to you for your support and for making this journey for all our kids possible. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without your contribution!

Thank you for supporting us!