The Green Sea Yard of Varna has marked its first birthday on 4th December 2019. This wonderful holiday was celebrated with scores of games, gifts, fun and surprises for the youngest visitors. Together children, parents and professionals have been developing themselves and growing up, falling down and getting up, together building up trust in each another over the past 12 months.
It opened its doors last year, following the example of hundreds of similar centres around the world. The Green Sea Yard of Varna is a very special place for the little ones and their parents, a venue intended for meetings, reflection, adaptation and development. In a cozy and peaceful environment, in the presence of professionals, children make their first steps in communicating with their peers and the outside world, and parents may talk to specialists - psychologists, speech therapists, pediatricians and pedagogues. At this special place for spending leisure time, the parents accompanying their kids can have a rest, communicate with other parents, and have the opportunity for social meetings.
The Centre has been adapting, implementing and developing the ideas of the French psychoanalyst and a pioneer in child analysis Françoise Dolto and of the already established Bulgarian experience at the founded in 2015 such Centre in Sofia. The Green Sea Yard of Varna, similar to the French Green House, welcomes children 0-3 years of age and their parents in the playground of the Varna Sea Casino. The major goals of the project, underpinned by the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology at the Faculty of Public Health at MU-Varna, with the support of the French Institute in Bulgaria, are early socialization, diagnostics and prevention.
“MU-Varna is a part of the very beginning of the idea for the creation of a Green Sea Yard, of its implementation and development. This new space brings a lot of faith and joy for the children and their parents, it instills confidence in everybody that things can happen in a new way, as long as there is a desire, discipline, professionalism, and above all, a sense of unity,” said Prof. Todorka Kostadinova – Vice-Rector for International Cooperation.
“The team that created the Green Sea Yard has achieved a great deal for just a year. The World Health Organization has selected four good practices from all that have been implemented by different institutions and countries. And one of them is the Green Sea Yard of Varna, which is a kind of recognition that this unique location is an adequate application of the Françoise Dolto’s principles and has made a major contribution to the care of early childhood development,” pointed out Assoc. Prof. Emanuela Mutafova.
The visitors to the Green Sea Yard of Varna are delighted and grateful that their children can play, socialize through communicating with other kids, and they highly appreciate the venue and the professionals. They believe that Varna really needs such a place, because in this way the youngest and their parents spend their leisure time together, and quench the painful issues related to going to a nursery or kindergarten.
You can see the video of the event
here 