One can hear and see them everywhere around May 24: counting to 12 – the number of years they spent at school. Jutting out of luxurious limos and sports cars with screaming horns, dressed up in expensive dresses and suits, they drink straight from the bottle. That is how school leavers in Bulgaria look like during their proms, which cost a fortune to their parents. Graduation is the first major event in life, but proms have degraded for a long time to a prank fest.

The Bulgarians see the education of their children as a basic value and they are ready to spend their last dime on it. Classic writer Ivan Vazov described it in his Under the Yoke novel – children, teachers and the town’s notables also gathered to mark the end of the school year. However, those celebrated what they had learnt. Nowadays high school graduates celebrate themselves, no matter whether the parents can afford the rackety party – prom is once in a lifetime.

Proms are a strange Bulgarian invention that resembles weddings in their opulence and extravagance. However, parents take the organization of the event as some sort of a duty and no one talks on money. A loan is always an option, right? Those, who have girls will definitely have to pay more – a dress, shoes, a purse, jewels, a hairdo, manicure, pedicure etc. – the sum quickly goes to EUR 1,000. The prom girl has spent weeks in the solarium and the gym – also paid by her parents. One should add the rent of a limo, the fiesta for relatives and friends of the parents and the cover of the prom itself. It is all a one-night-luxury that helps the 19-year-old boys and girls taste their dream life after school.

However, reality is pretty darker. Bulgaria is the poorest EU member-state and each 5^th of its citizens lives on the threshold of poverty with EUR 150 per month. The average salary is around EUR 400. Well, in prom’s night all these thoughts are inappropriate. The Bulgarians are well-known for celebrating like hell, no matter we are the poorest ones in Europe.

As any rule has its exceptions, this senseless spending of money might remain history one day. The charity initiative www.steniskanabala.bg (go to the prom in a T-shirt) tries to wake up the consciousness of the graduates, calling them on to donate their prom money to orphans, in order for the latter to continue their education at a university or a professional center. Still, few prom makers go to their event dressed in an ordinary T-shirt, but the good thing is they exist…

English version: Zhivko Stanchev