Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

during the Balkan wars (1912 – 1913) and World War I (1915 – 1918). Between
1912 and 1918 more than a thousand women were trained. Most of
them were young women of middle- or upper-class backgrounds: housewives,
teachers and students.
In 1914 Queen Eleonora invited two American nurses (from the
American Red Cross) to Bulgaria, who were given the task of modernising
nurse education in Bulgaria. At the start of the war they went to the town of
Plovdiv, where they began home visits, in collaboration with members of the
local “Samarjanka” society. Poor families and sick people in the town and in the
villages close to Plovdiv were visited. A former “Samarjanka” society president
by the name of Harizanova remembered: “At that time the Samarjanka society
focussed its activities on the poor families of wounded soldiers, there was an
urgent need for such nurses. Immediately after their arrival in Plovdiv and at
the first meeting with members of the society, they impressed everybody by
their strong organisational spirit. Quiet and modest in their nursing cloths,
they went in rain, wind and snow, from home to home, accompanied by one
or two members of the board of the “Samarjanka” Society and the local priest
in outlying residential districts of Plovdiv.” 11 The same author, Harizanova,
also published an article on the occasion of the death of Helen Scott Hey (one
of the two American nurses), in which she wrote that “(…) For a period of
one and half years, we and the two Americans went untiringly in the outskirts
among poor or wounded soldier families, and in the evenings when we needed
to relax, the two nurses worked on the city map and lists of the sick (...)”. 12
In this way the “Samarjanka” women started regular home visiting
practice. They also began to document their visits and to describe the family
situations, to collect data about poor families during the war and to report on
what their own activities. They were able to adopt the methods of home visits,
including interviewing clients and documenting cases.
These methods were established in both voluntary and professional
social work after the war in Bulgaria. After the war many women coming
from these “Samarjanka” societies continued to work among the poor.
They continued to visit the outskirts and to give advice to poor families or
11
Sofia state archive, F. 360 (Archive the Nurse school in Sofia), op.1 , A.e 51, l.7-10.
12
Mir newspaper, N 9730, December 15, 1932.
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