Felix Diaz, American University in Bulgaria (Bulgaria)

This project started in February 2021 as a partnership with the Alzheimer Bulgaria Association. Together with them, in the Summer of 2021 we developed three 10-hour seminars on “Enhancing Quality of Life, Cognitive Functioning and Communication” in dementia, with social intervention and health professionals, respectively in the cities of Topolovgrad, Svilengrad and Gotse Delchev. 

In Spring 2022 we developed two more 10-hour seminars, specifically addressed at the workers of the Residence for Persons with Dementia “St. Mina” in Blagoevgrad. These seminars constituted the starting point for a solid collaborative relation with the Blagoevgrad social services, which keeps growing today. The most tangible outcome of this relation, and of the project so far, is the book in Bulgarian “Closer to Us, Part of Our World”, a guidebook for formal and informal caregivers of dementia, which developed from the workshops (https://alzheimer-bg.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Closer-to-Us-Part-of-Our-World.pdf). It was published in June 2023 and publicly presented at the Blagoevgrad Municipality in August 2023. We are distributing it freely, both in pdf and paper form, among professionals and interested public in the region. 

The present proposal emerges from the enthusiastic response the guidebook has generated among professionals in public services for the elderly in the region. At the same time, it constitutes the first opportunity to use the guidebook as an instrument to train professional caregivers, and to test its applicability in a specific project.