Mr Martin Vishanov, a computer modeling and information technology teacher at Vasil Levski Comprehensive School in the Bulgarian city of Russe, owes his life to his third-grade class. During a lesson last summer, Mr Vishanov began to feel dizzy. He lost his balance and when he tried to sit down on his chair he crashed to the floor.
Teachers taking a tumble is usually an occasion for mirth. But the class, having noted moments before that their teacher was struggling to speak, knew right away that Mr Vishanov was having a stroke.
They ran to find their class teacher, Mrs Diana Ilieva, who called 112. The ambulance arrived within 10 minutes and after emergency treatment for stroke, Mr Vishanov was soon back at school.
In Sofia four summers earlier, on 3 August 2019, the wedding took place of Dimitar Hadzhivalchev and Elica Hadzhivalcheva. Elica is the founder of Heart to Heart for Bulgaria, an organisation for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, a cause to which she devoted herself after losing her first husband to a heart attack in 2016. Dimitar is a process improvement specialist in the FMCG sphere. Their story began on a Friday evening in August 2017 when Elica and Dimitar were “tricked” into meeting by mutual friends. Although neither of them was interested in meeting someone new, they met again for lunch the very next Tuesday, during which Dimitar learnt that, as well as being a great beauty, Elica had invested her life with meaning by devoting her time and talent to a noble cause.
His own career priorities, which revolved around building brand equity for consumer goods such as coffee or chocolate, seemed shallow by comparison. Meeting Elica opened his eyes to the potential for living with purpose. “I was inspired by her,” he says.
Elica was impressed in turn with Dmitar’s “curiosity, charisma, and wholeheartedness”. They were married two years later.
“At that stage of life – we were close to 50 – there was no time for hesitation,” says Dimitar who believes that symbols determine our attitude towards the world. “We got married to show our devotion to each other. Marriage was a symbol we gave to one another.”
“You can’t plan when you will meet and fall in love with another person,” Elica says. “He became the most special person to me, gifting me every day with challenges and adventures that fill me with gratitude, joy, and insights into the strength and beauty of my inner world. He is true love in action!”
Something momentous was about to happen
A golden thread ties their love story to the survival and recovery of Mr Vishanov of Russe, for Elica and Dimitar are the reason why, over the past two years, 25,000 children and more than 150,000 adults in Bulgaria have learnt to recognise and act on the symptoms of stroke.
Elica was introduced to the schools-based stroke awareness education project, FAST Heroes, in 2019, at the invitation of the World Stroke Organization. Things clicked immediately the way they had with Dimitar, who recalls: “She came back from that first meeting saying this is my thing, I have found it.”
By March 2020 Elica was poised to introduce the campaign at her first school. Instead, she found herself standing in a grocery store where people around her were fighting each other for flour and beans. It was like being in a war, she told Dimitar who was returning from a business trip to Serbia where he’d become aware something momentous was about to happen.
Days later the number of Covid patients in Bulgaria reached 23 and the government declared a state of emergency. As wave after wave of the disease rolled across Europe, Dimitar and Elica busied themselves with planning, and translating and adapting the FAST Heroes material. Although they had yet to implement the campaign in a single school, their commitment ran so deep that they had to make a rule to stop working at seven in the evening “even if we were in the middle of a word”.
By the time restrictions were lifted, they were more than ready to carry out one of the most impactful FAST Heroes implementations in the world, in one of the most complex countries in Europe.
“I really admire her”
Bulgaria is a small country buffeted by external influences and blighted by corruption. Bulgarians have gone to the polls six times in under three years – a political game of musical chairs that presents challenges to the top-down strategy Elica and Dimitar have adopted in order to achieve the scale they want.
Stroke is a leading cause of mortality and disability in Bulgaria where it affects around 50,000 people per year. For these patients the likelihood of dying as a result of stroke will be three times higher than the average in other EU countries, and the majority of survivors will live with disabling disorders for the rest of their lives.
Most Bulgarians are unfamiliar with the risk factors for stroke, unable to recognise stroke symptoms and unaware of what to do at the first signs of stroke. The sooner a stroke patient reaches a stroke-ready hospital, the greater their chances of surviving with their life intact, but fewer than three percent of stroke victims in Bulgaria undergo thrombolysis, the emergency treatment approved for acute ischemic stroke. For tens of thousands life will never be the same again.
For stroke prevention and awareness, the clock is ticking, so Elica and Dimitar have devised a strategy that meets the scope of the crisis. Rather than approach schools directly they reach out to mayors and the heads of regional departments, inviting local doctors to bolster their case. Once convinced, these officials will summon the school principals in their territories to a meeting where the campaign is introduced, and personal stories shared. In a country where 50,000 strokes occur per year, stroke is personal, and for the school principals the opportunity to share their own experience with stroke frequently ends in tears. They will carry this emotion back to their schools. Finally, teachers at these schools learn about FAST Heroes in a webinar before they start implementing the programme in their classrooms.
That their strategy has a hundred percent success rate doesn’t mean there are no difficulties.
With officials having become wary of well-meaning projects that cost money and deliver no measurable results, it can be hard to open doors and start conversations, Dimitar says. In addition, teachers in Bulgaria are accustomed to being remunerated for implementing EU-sponsored education programmes; FAST Heroes is the only one they’re expected to deliver for free.
“They may start out a bit negative when they realise they’re not getting paid but once they’re acquainted with the programme and become infected with Elica’s energy and devotion, they turn into ambassadors,” Dimitar says.
Leaving a good impression is imperative. Their diligence and combined charisma have won them friends in the media and in Bulgaria’s stroke community and earned them the support of the ministers of health and education. To this they can now add the ministries of the economy and the interior with whose endorsement they recently began educating staff in state-owned enterprises and the emergency services.
“We use every possible tool to get inside people’s hearts and minds,” says Dimitar whose role is that of master strategist. Although he continues with his own career, he was a convert to FAST Heroes from the outset, captivated like everyone else by Elica’s gifts for attracting and inspiring others. “I really admire her,” he says.
The essential components of a meaningful life
Working together turns their work into happiness, Elica says. “We both have the same goal – to be dedicated to causes that benefit others and align with our values. But of course each of us has our own strengths and roles. Dimitar is an exceptional strategist, and I am the one who methodically and devotedly pursues our set goals.
“We strive to uplift each other, support each other, and enhance our skills, making us better. In my work with Dimitar, I have learned not to fear ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Together we succeed, take risks, and make mistakes, but we also know how to love each other, even when we fail. We allow ourselves to be exactly who we are and to do what we want to do. This is how we work our happiness and attract success in our work.”
Working for the benefit of society is one of the essential components of a meaningful life, Elica believes. There are others: “Realized potential and talents, the absence of any regret for things past or undone, and certain repetitive healthy actions and choices that always bring us happiness [but] the awareness that you are doing something that makes the world a slightly better place is a big part of the meaning.”
These insights arrived in the slipstream of pain and loss after her first husband died inside an ambulance that had arrived too late.
“I remember the old times when I lived in complete comfort,” Elica says. “This peace did not challenge me to ask myself how I was handling my life and work. Then, suddenly, a great pain from my personal history burst into my life with overwhelming force. Following that, of course, like any other person I also had many unproductive months in which sadness, anger, and despair hindered everything, including my work.
“But what I know now, with the perspective of time, is that when pain shatters your life the only way to survive is to become more organized, more disciplined, and to rely solely on your own strength to accomplish your daily tasks and life goals. In this sense, my personal history taught me to take responsibility for the way I live my life and work.”
FAST Heroes is their life’s mission, both Elica and Dimitar say. It changed their lives and has already changed the lives of countless others, not least those of Mr Martin Vishanov of Vasil Levski Comprehensive School and his class of third-graders. Ten years from now they hope to have changed the lives of thousands more as by then at least 300,000 children in Bulgaria will hopefully have earned their capes, and Elica and Dimitar will feel “satisfied and worthy of happiness”.
