This year marks 160 years since the emergence of the first Bulgarian chitalishte community centers, a unique cultural institution in Bulgaria. The earliest of them were organized in the towns of Svishtov, Lom and Shumen. Today Bulgaria has more than 3500 chitalishte centers. Of them 2600 run various educational and cultural activities in villages despite meagre financing.

Now thanks to the initiative of the young enthusiasts from Vibes, an online platform for lifestyle and culture, two community centers which are not in big cities will have the chance to offer their libraries’ members new book titles. The Bulgarian National Radio library has joined the campaign and its employees have donated more than 300 books in support of the noble cause.

The campaign’s motto is “Give a book to a chitalishte in need”. We learn more about it from Stanislava Dobreva and Konstantin Simidchiiski, Vibes founders:

„At the very beginning when we started the website we had a section dedicated to charity”, Stanislava says. “In February we started looking for community centers in a bid to organize a charity action for book donation on the occasion of May 24, the Day of Slavonic Alphabet and Culture. It took us two months to reach the two community centers. We did not target big cities on purpose because they get much more attention than villages. We found our two chitalishte community centers through personal contacts and via communication on social networks. We contacted them, asked them what books they needed and launched the action.”

The community centers that are going to enrich their libraries with new books due to this campaign are faced with common problems: worn out book copies and deficit of titles that are mandatory in school curricula. One of the centers is Hristo Botev 1928 in the village of Stoletovo, Southern Bulgaria. Its library has close to 7000 volumes and periodicals for various age groups. The other community center, Samoobrazovanie (Self-Education), is in the Northwestern village of Selanovtsi and is more than 120 years old.

„The villages in Bulgaria have many problems to wrestle with”, Konstantin from Vibes says. “These include political and economic trouble, so people simply have neither time nor energy to engage in cultural activity. But we all know that once culture is neglected the situation becomes bleak. So we are trying to help village communities where culture is concerned. Even if only few people have access to the donated books, this will still be a success, a small but important step.”

„Community centers in villages have problems finding donors, and this is only part of the problem”, Stanislava adds. “It is even hard to buy books. In Sofia we have a great many bookstores and also street vendors so we can buy books at lower prices. In villages though, people do not have this opportunity. They do not have access to new book editions which on top of everything else are far from cheap.”

This is the first action of this kind run by Vibes platform. Its team vows to organize similar campaigns in support of Northwestern Bulgaria and other underprivileged regions of the country.

English version: Daniela Konstantinova