Bulgaria Ski discussion board

Had some shocking info concerning Bulgarian Orphanages sent through to me today from FV (thanks Tony.)

The total number of children housed in Orphanages throughout Bulgaria is 8,457, living in a total of 144 institutions. Of them, 98% have at least 1 parent still living, so very few are actually orphans.

There are 14.8 million children in the UK. So putting that into perspective, if the same percentage of UK kids were in Orphanages, that would be a staggering 880,000 childen in care.

Many of the Bulgarian kids end up be being adopted by foreigners and moved away to a land they don't know and trying to understand a language they don't speak.

The basic principals of ' out of sight - out of mind' has been adopted in Bulgaria for many year now, so let's make sure 'our' kids are never allowed to be out of our sight or out of our minds, and lets continue for as long as we can to give these children hope.

Pete

Foreign adoption is not legal in Bulgaria and hasn't been for some time. Indeed, foreign of adoption may be a good thing as local adoption of Roma and disabled kids is not very successful. Many kids go to state institutions for short periods - when parents have to travel to work, or when the parents have insufficient funds to support them for example - and then return to their families at a later stage. But fundamentally the point is the same - the system puts kids in institutions who could be better cared for in the community or in their families.