The project collects and presents authentic Roma fairy tales told by elderly women from the Fakulteta, Filipovtsi and Hristo Botev neighborhoods, and adapted for a children’s audience. The stories will be illustrated by Roma children aged 10-12 in creative workshops led by an artist.
The final result is an illustrated book that encourages reading comprehension and preserves the cultural heritage of the Roma community in Sofia. The project combines tradition and education, turning reading into a shared experience between generations.
The project “Grandmother’s Fairytales” was created in response to a specific observation from pedagogical practice and work with Roma children of school age – many of them can read mechanically, but encounter serious difficulties in understanding and interpreting literary texts. This affects their attitude to reading and their motivation to study Bulgarian language and literature. The lack of content with which they can identify makes reading an even more distant and incomprehensible activity for them.
This observation inspired the team to create a book of authentic Roma fairy tales told by elderly women from the Roma community in Sofia and adapted in an accessible form for children and young readers. The project is based on the belief that reading comprehension can develop when the text “speaks” to the reader, when he discovers familiar realities, emotions and characters in him that help him make sense of what he has read and build a connection with the word. The project combines the tradition of oral tradition with the mission of building analytical and comprehensible reading.
The project aims to promote reading comprehension and interest in literature among Roma children and young people by creating an accessible book with authentic Roma fairytales that connects the cultural heritage of the community with the process of comprehending and interpreting the text.
Specific objectives
- To collect and adapt the oral cultural heritage of the Roma community in Sofia – authentic fairy tales and stories passed on by older women that reflect the wisdom, humor and values of the community.
- To create an accessible literary product – an illustrated booklet written in clear language and designed in such a way that it is easy to read and understand by children and people with low literacy.
- To stimulate reading comprehension and analytical thinking in Roma children by working with texts in which they recognize themselves and which support the process of comprehension, interpretation and expression.
- To encourage intergenerational creative exchange – through meetings between adult women (storytellers) and children (illustrators), in which reading, art and sharing become a joint experience.
- To increase access to literature and culture in the peripheral districts of Sofia through free distribution of the booklet and public readings and presentations.
- To increase the visibility of the Roma community as an active creator of cultural content and bearer of living literary heritage.
Activities:
- Identification of influential and respected Roma women from the Fakulteta, Filipovtsi and Hristo Botev neighborhoods and holding six meetings to collect authentic oral histories and fairy tales. The collected materials will be recorded and processed as an ethnographic study.
- Adaptation of the selected texts for a children’s audience by a philologist – a specialist in Bulgarian language, in order to create accessible and understandable fairytales, preserving the spirit of the Roma oral tradition.
- Conducting creative workshops with Roma children (10-12 years old) under the guidance of an artist and pedagogue to illustrate fairytales. The illustrations will be included in the book.
- Design, prepress and printing of the children’s book in a circulation of 100 pcs., with an accessible layout and color drawings.
- Presentation of the publication through the Reading Festival in the Fakulteta neighborhood, including readings, an exhibition and free distribution of the book to families, schools, libraries and organizations in the Roma neighborhoods of Sofia.
The project activities are directly aimed at achieving its main goal – to promote reading comprehension and interest in literature among Roma children through the creation of culturally close and accessible content.
Project duration: 15.02.2026 to 01.12.2026
Funding: Sofia Culture Program 2026 / DIRECTION 5 “LITERATURE AND READING”
