By Viktoria Panayotova (YES 2018-2019, Bulgaria, hosted by Ayusa in Stewartstown, PA)

The kid inside our hearts is always there—we just need to find it!

“Fairy Tales from Morning until Night” is a project I came up with during some of my most difficult moments while quarantining. At these times, I found myself thinking about families who are currently facing challenges, kids who are struggling finding new things to do at home, and all the positive energy we need in the world right now.I decided that the best way to spread positive energy is through fairy tales. Everyone knows at least one fairy tale from their childhood that has left a mark or memory in their lives in some way, and I thought why not have the YES Alumni in Bulgaria share their most important fairy tale with the world. I decided to ask our alumni network what their favorite fairy tales are and to record their readings of them. 

I did this because I wanted to create a space where children who aren’t in the habit of reading, cannot read, or don’t have someone to read to them could have access to recordings of fairy tales in Bulgarian and English. YouTube is a safe and easy media platform to use for people from all ages so I chose it as “our space” where kids of any age could listen to folk fairy tales from many diverse cultures in both Bulgarian and English. I believe audio books and stories push the bounds of our imagination and this provides a new and different way of learning that is special!

After I got a few recordings of stories together, I edited them and added calming music as the background. I then created a cover photo for each fairy tale on Canva where I put the title of the story and the reader’s name. I then created two playlists on YouTube to post the videos, too.  Everything came together magically! 

Our community is still collecting and recording stories, which will be going on the channel very soon. For our future stories, I asked a friend of mine who plays the piano to record one of his own pieces, which we could add to our stories as a background. I also hope that this idea will be passed on outside of the YES Bulgaria alumni community and spread to the other YES alumni communities so that we can have a diverse set of fairy tales from other cultures and in other languages.

In this time of crisis, I am even more grateful that we have a strong alumni community where we support each other and create wonderful things together. Although the internet can sometimes be negative, it is our job to make it positive and use it as a tool to bring people closer together, especially with children. It is always important to remember the positive cheerful kid that lives in us!

If you want to send us a reading of your favorite fairy tale, email us at: [email protected]