Ivaila is 24 years old. Hobby: football
Ivaila arrived at the House of Opportunity in Skravena when she was 19 years old. She graduated after 20 months.
Ivaila had spent her life in institutional care. Her first memories from the orphanage in Ugarchin are unpleasant: “Because we were at the orphanage we were treated like animals”. She was transferred to the orphanage in Vratsa, where she managed well, had friends and got along with the tutors. After she completed twelfth grade Ivaila had to leave the orphanage and she found herself at the house of her mother, with whom she had only very recently reconnected. Iva told us: “I had lost hope. My mother was not capable of taking care of herself, let alone another person. She lived in an isolated place. I was thinking: Is this it? Is this going to be my life?”
After twenty months at the House of Opportunity she decided to take her future in her own hands and during the summer of 2010 she started living on her own. Two months later she successfully passed her state exam for which she had prepared at the House. Today she has a serious relationship, 11 months old daughter and is making plans to get a teaching degree from the university. She dreams of becoming a children’s teacher and maybe, in her perfect scenario, a football coach!
“In the orphanage you learn by yourself. No one tells you whether the things you do are right or wrong and whether there is a better way to do something, the simple daily stuff. This way you learn wrong. It is as if I am starting a new life now. I learn everything over again, but now the way they are.”
