The aim of the project was to create a Day Centre for elderly people in Gortalovo village and to provide conditions for integration of the people from the third age and to overcome their social isolation.

Within the frame of the project a day centre for elderly people was renovated and equipped so that all people from the village who want could receive a free computer literacy course and work with internet – email, facebook, skype. The first trained pensioners transfer their knowledge to the next ones.

People are enormously interested – most of them for the first time in their life have the opportunity to write or speak through internet with their children and close relatives that are abroad or in the big cities.

When one of the oldest persons in the village (aged 82) sits in front of the computer with headphones and microphone and starts a conversation with his granddaughter in Spain, he starts to cry and to kindly touch the monitor saying “My child, I live long enough to see you on the TV”.

Now there is a printer in the Centre so that people from the village don’t need to go to the town in order to print or copy a page or two.

Regularly lectures and consultations with different specialists are organised; also celebrations of birthdays and name-days take place. People can drop into the centre to check their blood pressure.

Part of the project was to establish groups for neighborhood self help that consist of volunteers from the village who help local people with difficulties in mobility in their everyday life – do the shopping, bring bread and medicines, help them light a fire in the stove. 

Chitalishte “Herion” 
Penka Ruseva 
2 Binka Parashkevova str. 
5888, Gortalovo village 
Pleven municipality 
Tel. +359 64 908 414; +359 882 997 964
doni_1950@abv.bg