15/05/2020 Време за четене: 3 минути

“Hope” – Bookshop with a Mission

Bookshop with a mission “Hope” of Parallel World Association

Since we put the PJs on we know what is to be a prisoner in your own home. Day after day without a goal, meaning or direction. Could be worst though – being under quarantine for life because you are a parent of a child with intellectual disorder and you cannot either work nor earn. But it could be even worst. You yourself are a child with disability, but already grown up. You are of age and nobody would employee and you actually don’t know what you can do.

Money is tight and your puny social pension has to be enough for both you and your mother who herself is already of an age requiring assistance. Doomed to such a future a group of parents of children with intellectual disorders from Plovdiv decided to deny life in permanent quarantine and to come up with work and meaning for themselves and their children. And so year and a half ago the bookshop “Hope” was created. Bookshop with a workshop – children and parents together produce souvenirs /keychains, postcards, holiday decoration…/.

They are not anymore just parents and children, but colleagues as well – shared work, shared profit, shared world. Encouraged that they can more they organize sport events for the youngsters – their basketball team is competing in Italy each summer where they win medals, others play tennis or do swimming. Despondency is no more – intellectual difficulties are not a sentence, but simply difficulties that can be overcome.

Now, because of the virus situation, the workshop is on the fritz. It is risky for the young and even more so for their elderly parents to travel by public transport to their workplace. And they are once more closed at home. Days yet again start to pass aimlessly in PJs. To help them escape the social isolation again they need a company vehicle. The SAVE the SAVIORS Initiative will help them to get one.