The Faces of our Champions for Children team
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- Available in:
- Български
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Meet our Champions for children team
Yana-Kalina Mitrovska
Imagine a gentle, crazy creature, with long curly hair and a smile you can hardly resist - in front of you is Yana-Kalina! Her favorite book since childhood is "The Little Prince", who, along with his fox, is always with her - now even in the form of a tattoo over one of her elbows. Yancheto has been writing since she was a child - short stories and poetry, she sang in the choirs of “The Classical” High School she graduated from, she likes to draw minimalist lines, hinting at shapes, she has a kitten named Alice and an enviable experience in television. She is currently studying “Bulgarian Philology” at Sofia University and while laughing claims that working for us is the only job she hasn't wondered how to escape from.
Zornica Nikolova
Few people can tell you in Latin – “Mens sana in corpore sano”, but Zori does it easily. The translation is "A healthy mind in a healthy body" and is one of the maxims in which our youngest member of the "Champions for Children" team believes. Yes, Zornitsa is still an 11th grade student at NGDEK, but she is 18 years old, not to mention that she has known for three years what she wants to do in this life - Humanitarian Law, International Relations, Political Science, Social Entrepreneurship. She follows her path in a focused way, and the term "free time" is conditional for her. However, somewhere on the border between realism and conventionality, she likes to distract from her serious daily life, preparing her own organic and vegan desserts, reading her favorite Camus or training in the gym for strength and endurance. She is often asked, "Hey, are you really 18?"
Petya Velkova
One of Petya's biggest surprises when she started working with us is that there are actually people who donate! And sometimes they are the ones you least expect it from. Undoubtedly her commitments as a Champion will help her a lot in her studies of Psychology. She is studying Geography alongside it and thank goodness our flexible hours allow her to be up to scratch in everything. Before she became involved in supporting the most vulnerable children, her passion was, and still is, vulnerable homeless and abandoned animals. It's no coincidence that their house in Hisar is full of rescued kittens and a street dog, and her apartment has two cats. After saving the whole world, she's thinking of rewarding herself with a trip. And not to warm countries, but somewhere in Scandinavia - to snow and the Northern Lights.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Kristian Stratev
After studying enough ancient languages at the National High School for Ancient Languages and Cultures in Sofia, Kristian switched to Balkan Studies at Sofia University, where he is currently focusing on Albanian, Romanian and Greek. But he is now fluent in Spanish, Turkish and English, so don't be surprised if you see him in conversation with foreigners to whom he explains in their native language exactly what UNICEF is doing for children in the country. The drive to do good was inherited from his mother, and what brought him to us is a cause worth being committed to help every child in Bulgaria.
Gabriela Kostova
She has a degree in Film Directing from Birmingham, and one of her big dreams is to make documentaries about the parts of the world where people most need to fight for their rights. As she prepares for these future projects, Gabby has focused her energy on helping the most vulnerable children who don't have the ability to make it on their own and need support the most. Her desire to "improve" the world is expressed in other ways as well - she hasn't eaten meat since she was 10, has cooked many soups at homeless soup kitchens, and adopted a cat with two prosthetic legs. It's strange that she describes herself as an introvert, while at the same time engaging so many like-minded people in causes for children. We have our own explanation for this - when you do something sincerely and with heart - it always shows.
Ekaterina Dencheva
Katya is a graduate of the National Sports Academy and that must be where the desire to achieve all her goals comes from. One of them - the desire to do good - connected her with us and now she is happy, not only because she helps the causes for the children, but somehow she also manages to make the people who decide to support them smile. That the children are our future is something she sees firsthand every day as the mother of a 13-year-old boy who teaches her patience every day. She in turn tries to give him the best of herself, educating him in the right values in life. Outside of her role as mother and Champion, Katya is also a Greek translator and gives private lessons.
Pavleta Nikolaeva
Even as a child, Papi loved long walks in and around her native Lukovit. Her favourite place was the Prohodna cave. She would go to it, gaze up into God's eyes, absorb the energy of this magical place and often dream of a beautiful life in a beautiful world. Today, now a grown child, she's a sophomore studying Marketing at UNC, but her dreams haven't changed much. To finally reach us, our Champions advert appeared, then ran, but then popped up again to give her a chance to act on the change she wants to see in the world herself. One of her ideas for the future is to work for children, in addition to working with them. Coming from a teaching family - we believe that is very likely to happen.
Ioana Afenlieva
One of the things that impressed Ioana about the crisis in Ukraine was the quick response of UNICEF, not only in Bulgaria, but also globally. She became acquainted with the organisation while studying Film and Film Studies at King's College London. While still there, as chair of the Bulgarian Students' Representative Office, he spearheaded many good initiatives. So the fact that she is with us now fits her logically. And even tiredness after a shift counts as "good" - because it was worth it. In her spare time, making plans for the future and recovering from the pandemic, Joana is developing her own artistic projects as an actress, reading, even embroidering. RPGs are a big weakness of hers. In other words - Role-Playing Games, where you create your characters and play with them in a completely open universe. Nice stories, all full of magic. Which it is.
