The orphanage is located in the village of Doganovo - about 9 km. away from the town of Elin Pelin, where our accomodation is. A minibus will be picking you up from the hotel every morning, or depending on the availability of the minibus we will have to travel to the orphanage by public transport (public minibuses), which takes 15-20 minutes each way.

The orphanage provides accomodation and care for children without parents – orphans, but also for the so called “social orphans” – whose parents aren’t capable of looking after them for various reasons. It caters for approximately 50 children aged 7 to 18, while the most of the children are in the age group of 8 to 16. Some children come for just weekly care (they go to relatives on weekends), others stay in the home during school times only and spend the rest of the time with relatives.

However – the majority of them – about 40 children, stay in the institution all year round, including weekends and school breaks as they have nowhere else to go to.

All the children from the orphanage attend mainstream/mass schools. This certainly aids social integration, however it is worth mentioning that it has been reported due to the children’s low self esteem and confidence when they are outside the orphanage – they are often exposed to bullying.

The children do not get enough attention and outside guests, not to mention foreigners such as yourselves and your visit will cause a great excitement, so please be ready for quite a few “Welcome to the Jungle” situations ☺.

Thank you for researching our organisation, we have witnessed the great improvement to our orphanage but more importantly to the orphans and staff.

The orphans are often starved of affection,  they feel worthless in society and quite abandoned, by participating in projects in the orphanage the orphans feel more worthy in society, their confidence grows, they are less aggressive and smile much more.

Our staff morale has greatly improved, often our staff are paid very low wages, when they see the benefit volunteering in our orphanage can bring to those foreign participants as well as the orphans their spirits
are lifted.

As an orphanage we have undertaken several projects and experienced in running such projects, our motivation is to bring back a smileto the orphans, in the words of Bhagavat Educational Trust - `it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness`

Please do contact us for further information, please also refer to our photo gallery, videos, documents for further information.