Family Type Placement Center for Children and Youth aged 13 and 18 (20) years without disabilities

Manager: Maria Chatrafilova

Service contact details: Family Type Placement Center, 4700 Smolyan,  email: cnst_smolyn@abv.bg

Capacity: 12 children

Specific activities of the two centers (beyond the ones described in the definition or methodology):

1. Camping in the mountains, excursions, outings and sports activities outside the FTPC. Camping is designed to help children learn how to work in a team, acquire conflict prevention skills, get hands-on training on how to set up a tent or survive in nature. Camping days give children the opportunity to work together on a multitude of tasks that generate strong positive emotions. Time is allocated in a way that children are always busy and interact between themselves in various activities requiring teamwork. Activities are intensive and structured in the form of a schedule with timelines.

Excursions are organized to acquaint children with Bulgarian cultural heritage and help them acquire independent living skills. Young people get to know the historical heritage of their country by visiting historic towns and areas and interacting with objects related to history and culture. They also visit important public institutions and national sites related to the governance and leadership of the country, such as the buildings of the President, Parliament, Council of Ministers, and get to know the functions and roles of those institutions. Excursions involve spending the night in a hotel and children have dinner and lunch in a restaurant in order to help them develop skills to eat and behave in public, use cutlery, etc.

2. Interest-based workshops at the FTPC. Activities are designed to develop children and young people’s talents and incentivize their sustainable interest towards a certain activity or area of knowledge. FTPC teams develop an annual program for organizing children and youth’s free time.

The two FTPCs organize the following interest-based workshops:

• Gardening. This workshop is designed to help young people acquire basic knowledge about growing and keeping a plant alive; acquire notions, such as size, shape, color, change; learn how seasons affect the garden, by being able to observe phenomena first hand and discover the differences. By taking care of the plants, children and youth learn to take responsibilities.
• Sewing. The activities are designed to help children acquire basic sewing skills either by hand or with a sewing machine. In addition, those activities give young people a sense of combining clothes, choosing the right clothes for the season or the occasion, etc.
• Art Studio. Activities in the art studio are designed to provide children with an opportunity to express themselves by painting and drawing or making souvenirs from various materials. In parallel, having the chance to implement their ideas in practice, they develop their creative thinking and participate in an environment that is different from daily routine and conducive to free and relaxed sharing of feelings and emotions.
• Young Chef. Those activities are designed to develop basic cooking skills but also some more sophisticated techniques for preparing dishes from Bulgarian and international cuisine. Children get the opportunity to cook meals that they know from their communities. In addition to cooking skills, they also learn how to work with electrical appliances and maintain the kitchen, how to use a cook book with recipes and find interesting recipes in cooking magazines.