Starting in 1st grade and until I finished my studies at the Russian Embassy School in 2017, one of my favorite activities around the Christmas holidays was the Christmas Charity Bazaar we organized at school. During that one Friday during the year, all of the students would bring baked goods and interesting things for their grades to sell, the parents would organize challenges and games, and the teachers would teach us – the young salesmen – how to work with money and customers. The Charity Bazaar was the administration’s way to not only unite the school community and bring joy to the student body, but to also allow some of the sick children in Sofia to experience the magic of Christmas. Just in one day, we would raise money to support the children at the emergency department at Pirogov and would turn toys into the joyful laughter and smiles of the patients.  

While I am one of those people who sing Christmas songs on random summer days, I do understand that this is not the time for sharing Christmas stories. However, I do believe that the kindness we all share during the Santa Claus period should not be limited by expectations or time but should rather become a habit – a lifelong virtue that we all possess and a practice that we exercise on a daily basis. 

A common issue that unfortunately comes up when it comes to charity (and not only) is the so-called “bystander effect”: in the belief that someone else is going to donate, someone else is going to help, we avoid our involvement in the matter. In other words, a diffusion in responsibility occurs which consequently leads to ineffective fundraising and a lack of support and funds for the ones in need. It is exactly for this reason why two and a half years ago I embarked on my mission to make the Angelia Club (a charity raising funds for children suffering from cancer) a cause that is not only developed by the members of the club but one that is continuously supported by the entire AAS community. 

People often tend to believe that in order for a positive change to occur they have to put in a lot of effort and a lot of money. The idea of an impossible goal – a finish line that is thousands of kilometers away – can act as a cold shower even for some of the most motivated individuals. However, what we tend to forget is that we are not alone in creating positive change and we should never be. Making a difference on a local or global scale is a matter of shared responsibility. As the former AAS director, Mr. James Urquhart, would say: “Капка по капка вир става”. We demonstrated this during the Ice Cream fundraiser in May, raising more than 11 700 lev, and I hope that we will keep demonstrating it in the future because together we can make Christmas miracles happen every day. Only TOGETHER and with CONSISTENT EFFORT, we can change the world and make it better.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
Helen Keller