Role Models

Every student needs a role model!

Donate your time, share your experience, and help children be successful!

Student mentors are capable to help children grow up to be successful, confident, and active citizens. “Role Models” is an initiative which gives successful professionals and public figures the opportunity to and inspire students.

Who were your role models growing up?

What made you admire them?

Did they inspire you to start a new hobby or to work on developing specific skills?

Imagine you had these people visit your classroom and talk to you and your classmates. Imagine they had the chance to give you advice, to tell you about the greatest challenges they had to overcome and how they did it.

How would your life have been different?

Having an influential role model is one of the most powerful factors involved in our personal growth and development. Role models are exceptionally crucial for children from vulnerable communities who rarely grow up surrounded and supported by mentors. This is why Teach For Bulgaria participants provide their students with opportunities to meet a variety of inspirational people. That way children can identify with their role models’ personal stories and find the motivation to work hard on their studies and not to give up.

We have dedicated this page to inspirational stories:

• About students and their dreams inspired by meetings with role models;
• About leaders who believe that all children have the potential to be successful.

How did it all start?

At Teach For Bulgaria we have always believed that leading by example is one of the most powerful and universal motivators not just for students, but for everyone. This is why we have encouraged and supported our participants to open their classrooms for role models with diverse backgrounds who can share their experience with students and inspire them to work hard and make their dreams come true.

Over the years we’ve had successful and inspirational professionals with diverse backgrounds visit our participants’ classrooms – role models from the business sector, artists, actors, musicians, athletes, journalists, educators, institutional partners, etc.

Our supporter Lyubomir Minchev shared his idea of having business leaders and public figures purposefully supporting students by sharing their experience or mentoring them during the Inspirational Leaders Charity Auction in 2017. His concept seemed like the logical next step of having guest speakers in the classrooms and provoked us to prioritize this exchange and celebrate role models, teachers, and students on this page.

Meet some of the role models who have supported our students: