English

Pia Mater Foundation is a non-profit organization established in 2010. Our organization comes with the third wave of nonprofits in Bulgaria. Today the question is not “What to do?” but “How to do it?”.

Pia Mater (lat.) means tender mother.

Our objective is to implement social and healthcare services that encourage individual development without placing restrictions or conditions upon the individuals.

Good parents aim to teach their child to be independent and are ready to let the child follow his or her own way at a certain point. Likewise our aim is to encourage the autonomy of people, who face social or health impediments and have temporary or prolonged need of support and care.

Since 2011 Pia Mater In-home care provides social services to elderly and ill people in Sofia, Bulgaria. The organisation was established with the start-up help of the Empower United Foundation. The in-home care project was granted the third award in the Empower award competition and 20 000 Euro start-up capital. A year later the organisation become a full-fledged social enterprise and continued its activities after the project period as a self-sufficient organisation.

On the second year of our activities we introduced The evidence-based approach in social services provision - Teletask.org and as a result in 2012 Pia Mater was awarded The Forbes magazine award in Quality of services category. In 2012 Pia Mater introduced two new preventive social services for Bulgaria - Telecare and Active Telecare.

In 2013 Pia Mater was licensed as a training center for aides (caregiver, badante, krankenphleger) and since then we provide regular trainings for caregivers that need professional training before accepting a job proposal for work in the EU. Each trainee is individually mentored by a Pia Mater caregiver.

In 2013 Pia Mater completed a small project for capacity building and staff training, funded by the ESF.

We are an active participant in working groups, determing social policy in Bulgaria and also we are frequently labeled a social enterprise model, sharing out experience with stakeholders in the social sector.

By 2014 Pia Mater provides more than 5 000 hours of care every month and employees more than 50 caregivers.

We are open for joint projects that introduce new social services and studies in social policies.

Krankenpfleger, Aide, Caregiver, Badante, Garde malade - English, German, Russian trainings