Areté Founder and Board Member Travels to Bulgaria
Areté Youth Foundation board member Brian Murray recently visited the organization’s Bulgaria office to get to know the team members there, understand their progress, and learn how the U.S. team can support the Bulgaria office.
To date, the team – whom Murray described as having a great mix of experience, youthful energy, and ambition – has been focused on building the right relationships with past participants of the camps, partners and Roma professionals. They are in start-up mode, so everyone is getting their hands dirty and taking responsibility for shaping the initiatives.
“It is a very exciting, yet challenging, time to be in the office,” Murray said. “I’m hoping that this start-up energy will challenge the whole team to discover new and innovative ways to implement programs.”
The Bulgaria team’s efforts are groundbreaking. No one has set out to create a Roma Professional Network before, but Murray is confident the staff will be successful because Arete has a strong base of more than 3,000 Roma university students and graduates to work with. Murray said he was most impressed with the team’s ability to coalesce support among others in the community.
“They have done a wonderful job of reaching out to many different groups – academic, governmental, and NGOs – to develop a strong network to propel them forward,” he said.”Given this great start, Jodi and I will have to continue to find new ways to support and strengthen the team on the ground. I see this as a great problem to have.”
