During the first 25 days since the declaring a national emergency concerning the COVID-19 outbreak in Bulgaria, the donations to BCause Foundation’s account amount to 966 189 leva.
On March 13, the day of declaring a national emergency due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Bulgaria, we at BCause Foundation started an active campaign under the motto “COVID-19 separated us physically but it also brought us closer socially than we’ve ever been”.
In this extreme situation we carry on doing what we do best – connecting donors and causes and providing donor mechanisms. We provide companies with an easy option to respond to the crisis by also including their employees.
We started at Platformata.bg - a website for online donations, created by BCause Foundation.
1. Together with #Forthegood Projectwe announced a campaign for meeting the urgent needs during the crisis COVID-19 in Bulgaria.
Not only we are raising money, but we manage to use them immediately so as to cover urgent needs of the hospitals in Sofia and throughout the country for protection of the medics and preparation of the hospital wards to face the crisis: personal protective means and consumables, medical respiratory equipment, other related equipment and supplies for hospital wards.
In order to adequately meet urgent needs, we support regular two-fold communication and coordination with the National Emergency Headquarters along with directors of the biggest hospitals in Sofia.
The first nation-wide campaign #Forthegood against COVID-29 in Bulgaria was active for 3 weeks (active process of raising money and distributing as per current needs) and managed to support more than 100 hospitals. The donated money is 569 449 leva. During this week the rest of ordered items will be delivered, until they are all exhausted.
2. We re-distributed 16 725.54 leva from other available funds and projects towards activities, linked to the crisis:
- 6000 leva to the National Network of the Health Mediators for their efforts in preventing the spread of COVID-19. The money is considered crisis financing from the “We Can”Fund at BCause Foundation.
- 7525,54 leva to Aleksandrovska Hospital – for supplies and protective wear from the “Funny Summer, Caring Autumn” Project by BCause Foundation, financed by Philip Morris Bulgaria.
3200 leva to the Hospital in Vratsa – from a donation account of “Paladin realty Management” – for the equipment of a crisis-oriented COVID-19 ward in the hospital.
3. We attracted corporate donations, which we managed in partnership and are yet to be distributed:
- 320 000 leva – Philip Morris Bulgaria – for the purchase of drugs and protective wear.
- 50 000 leva – Velev Invest OOD – In support of volunteer non-government organizations, helping people with disadvantages, socially isolated or the elderly through BCause Foundation
4. We consulted companies where they can most effectively contribute with their donations:
Chaos Group donated 200 000 leva for the purchase of medical equipment and supplies, and also created for their employees a corporate donation webpage under the donation instrument platformata.bg, at which their employees donated over 23 000 leva. Several more companies called out to their employees with a request to help and provided them with an opportunity to donate online – among them VMWare employees (raising 10 000 leva), Experian, A1.
5. We continue answering meeting requests for opening of new campaigns at Platformata.bg and DMSbg.com (which we managed together with Bulgarian Donation Forum). We consult organizations and hospitals how to successfully manage their donation campaigns online.
6. BCause Foundation granted the money, necessary to pay the hosting and the domain of the website https://covidresource-bg.org/, which was initiated by the medical journalist Nadezhda Cekulova. The website aims at popularizing the most important and recent scientific findings, linked to the COVID-29 infection and its complications and possible treatment. The project uses only scientific sources with proven credibility. All articles are translated into Bulgarian by professional translators who volunteer in this project. One of these translator-volunteeers is our employee Diana Stoykova, coordinator “Programs for NGOs” at BCause Foundation.
7. We took part in “Let’s hack the crisis”
Yavor Gochev, program director of the Rinker Center (part of BCause Foundation), was a moderator at a three-day online event “Let’s Hack the Crisis”, organized by Power of BG. It gathered business specialists, IT experts and creative people with humanitarian background, who aim to build projects together, helping the combat against COVID-19 in Bulgaria and its social consequences.
8. The social entrepreneurship course at Sofia University went online.
This course is being held for the 4th year in a row by United Ideas for Bulgaria and the Rinker Center in partnership with Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski”. The course is optional for Bachelor and Master Degree candidates at the Faculty of Еconomics and Business Аdministration and is opened to anyone, interested in social entrepreneurship.
9. The Rinker Center with #Newsfromourteams
An active involvement in meeting the challenges in the current situation before our teams-participants in our programs and their projects.
Read more about the Rinker Center here
