Annie's Story

This is the story of one of the pupils at Lipnitza:

"My name is Annie and I come from Sofia. I came in Lipnitza with my brother because both my mother and my father are drug addicts. They spent all their money on drugs. There was no money for bread. We were begging and sometimes we even were seeking for clothes and food in the trash-cans. Our father sometimes brought us rotten tomatoes, bananas and other food he had found thrown away in the greengrocery.

One day came a friend of my uncle. They had discussed my father and my mother. And this man had told my uncle that in Lipnitza there was a great school and that it would be good for us to go there and thus we wouldn't become drug addicts like our parents. I enrolled as first-graders. Now I'm in 4th grade. We go in Sofia only during the holidays because our father is in prison and we have three-month-old sister.

Here in Lipnitsa is nice. Mister Petkov and the other teachers take care of us. We have two English friends - Clare and Jennifer. They help us a lot. We really love them very much."