The Solidarity Day Center has opened its doors in Sofia in 2003. The goal of the center is to inform and consult adolescent addicts and their families and friends, to motivate and guide them towards treatment and rehabilitation, to include them in the Solidarity Day Center's rehabilitation program in order to help them achieve autonomy and social reintegration.
The Solidarity Program is based on the therapeutic communities model adapted to the conditions of a day center. It functions with the methodical support and supervision of the Trempoline therapeutic community of Belgium. The program participants come every day at 9 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. The Center represents an “open nonresidential program” model.
The services provided by the Solidarity Day Center can theoretically be divided into two categories. The non-rehabilitation ones include information-consultation and motivational work in the Ambassadors of Hope Information Center which opened in June 2006. It works with young addicts, both underage and adults, and with their families and friends. The program is socially oriented and provides equal opportunities for participation to people with different social backgrounds. The rehabilitation program works in two directions: pedagogical studio work (cuisine, hygiene, creativity, sports and social skills, gardening) and therapeutic work in groups. These two directions are interconnected. The studio work emulates social spheres and is a real life school, while simultaneously interactions in the studios allow work in the therapeutic groups. The result is social reintegration of people who have made the choice to quit their drug addiction. The program is open to females and males of age, regardless of their education, as well as to their parents, relatives and friends, who can make use of the specially designed parents work office. For the goal of re-socialization there is a group for employed people who have participated in this or other rehabilitation programs needing help and mutual support.
During 2006 we worked in total with 86 people in different formats. People who have participated in the program for at least 6 months are stable and re-socialized - they have jobs, they do not take drugs, they enjoy improved family relationships, they have no lawsuits in progress and have committed no crimes, they have improved health and stable interpersonal environment. The Solidarity Daily Center program is a long-term rather than one year program. The year 2007 will see an improvement in the re-socialization program and the establishment of a special office working with people going through the re-socialization process. The team is motivated to continue working even more so due to the fact that Solidarity is a partner of the Belgian Trempoline organization in the European mobility pilot project Leonardo "European companionship in education, training by travel".
In order to get society involved in our project we attract volunteers who help our communication campaign and participate in various initiatives. We are proud that our Ambassadors of Hope initiative has gained support in Belgium. Under this initiative we have organised two charity exhibitions, the first one of which was realised with the support of Region Wallonne – the Walloon government. We are grateful to the artist Nikolay Rusev who donated part of the exhibition income to our center.
Major partners in our work with addicts are the Preventive and Information Center on the Problems of Drug Addictions – Sofia, the Health Initiative Foundation, the SPHTDAA (State Psychiatric Hospital for the Treatment of Drug Addictions and Alcoholism) – Suhodol and the Dr. Georgi Kisyov SPHTDAA - Radnevo.
123 G.M. Dimitrov blvd office 14
Sofia 1797
Теl. 9630717
Теl./fax: 9711096
elena@solidarnost-bg.org
info@solidarnost-bg.org
Solidarnost_bg@abv.bg
www.solidarnost-bg.org
