Project Maria is a story worth telling. A woman, pregnant, a foreigner, a Muslim, in a small village in Bulgaria, with blood on her hands, with cut hair, with many secrets that no one wants to hear, except Angel Social. It's about those invisible people that we don't see, that we quite often deliberately fail to see... caught in a very very scary World!
What is Project Maria:
1. Involves media from Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. As well as the Latvian Police, the Latvian Embassy in Poland, and the Special Prosecutor's Office in Bulgaria.
2. Created a civic platform as well as great civic engagement in Project Maria. Created and implemented an International Literary Competition- in which 120 children from Bulgaria, USA, France and UK participated.
3. Demonstrates how drug and human trafficking works in Bulgaria. What are the logistics and how drugs travel in one country and people in the other.
4. Demonstrates the inefficiency and corruption in the NGO sector in Bulgaria. The Art Angel Foundation took part in a forum together with representatives of the Euro Parliament, in which the level of incompetence in Bulgaria and the corruption pervasive at all levels was revealed.
How were we able to deal with that?
A little more about Kalugerovo and Lesichovo Municipality, place at the heart of human trafficking and drug production. :
The result of Project Maria is that Maria disappeared after being placed in the Crisis Center. But less than two months later, the Special Prosecution Service and the Organized Crime Unit uncovered a large-scale drug lab in Kalugerovo, a plantation sheltering a huge cryptocurrency mine.
Kalugerovo(Lesitchovo Municipality) bears the worst legacy of post-communism. Indiscriminate spending of euro funds and uncontrollable corruption. As well as all the criminal manifestations of corruption.
Who is interested in the police not working, not being modern, neglecting human traffic, not seeing crimes, covering up crimes? The police itself. Those who live on bribes. Those who take bribes.
Why is Social Business the Key Tool to fight corruption? Because it is based on the personal initiative of the entrepreneur, not the employee motivated solely by the salary he should receive.
Few months after Maria in Kalugerovo:
The Special Prosecution Service and the Organized Crime Unit uncovered a large-scale drug lab in Kalugerovo, a plantation sheltering a huge cryptocurrency mine.
What Project Maria revealed was that being a foreigner, in trouble, even more in a disadvantaged situation and being in Bulgaria is quite dangerous. The reasons are dysfunctional institutions, a dysfunctional NGO sector (which is just a financial hole to leak Euro funding), and corruption. And we love Bulgaria and we want it to be part of the European family with dignity, so we asked 100 questions and quite loudly, with big media coverage.
A Year and a Half after Maria in Kalugerovo
Who were the institutions and NGOs covering up for at the expense of one defenseless Maria?
25/03/2023 Police uncover 3 narcs farms owned by Kalugerovo man
Kalugerovo can safely be called an important logistics hub on the Human Trafficking Route!
At a press conference on the NGO sector in Bulgaria at the Bulgarian Information Agency. On line is the European Parliament. My position is more than frank about what is happening in Bulgaria.
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Who are we? Where are we now- East, West?
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Could we choose to be good or evil?
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Is there a place for the moral and ethics in the modern world?
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What means to be human?
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What is our choice, faith or dogmas?
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What is the place of the fairy tales in the modern world?
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Do we need content in one story?
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What is the meaning of the civil society?
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What is the meaning of a citizen?
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Can we let a human being in need on the street?
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What makes us participants in a crime?
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Do we always have to wait for someone to ask for help?
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Do we have to tolerate violence, in any form?
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What forms of exploitation do we have in our society?
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Is it acceptable to be indifferent?
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Do we have to put emotion on when we see injustice?
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What is the place of the love in our world?
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What are the negatives of technocratic society?
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What are the negatives of the state based on bureaucratic principles? Do we still live in some sort of communism?
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What is the place of the spiritual principles in our life?
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What are the options for a woman victim of violence?
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Where and how she could find shelter?
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The human life could be associated with terms; priority, target group, rules to get help, requirements to get help, the options to be fired if you not follow the internal rules, to not receive any help if you are not in the target group?
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Can we measure the human life with a social service?
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What is happening with you when the scope and financing of a social service ends?
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What is the statistic for women victims of violence? What is happening with them after the service?
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What are the measures against the people who commit violence?
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Do we cure the symptoms or the social problem?
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What we do if we know the negative statistic of returning women to the origin of the problem?
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What is the position of the people who work in institutions about the women's social role, victims, those who committed crime?
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What is the perception of the society to prostitution?
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Does the society accept the different?
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Could the social perception be changed?
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Effectiveness or corruption?
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What does it mean to be tolerant?
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The society is a system or is a form of human bondage?
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Let’s ask ourselves what means social service, public founding, what taxes mean?
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Who is paying for the social services?
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What is happening when the social service ends, when there is no public funds for it, is there a place where a person without a home could take a shelter?
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If you don’t have money in your pocket to buy food, phone, to buy ticket, and is out of the social service parameters?
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Is the re- education with work the solution for re adaptation for victims of violence, people with deep psychological traumas?
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What is happening with the people who could not work? Do they have a place in our society?
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What is preventing the victim to not return to the cycle of violence and abuses?
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Who and how the victim of trafficking is defended by the people from whom she escaped?
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Who will provide her with the living conditions to not look for them again?
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Who and how she is prevented from criminal networks, corrupt officials, from everything that we know is existing in our society?
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How the institutions solve problems with human trafficking?
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How they manage human trafficking information, could the information be manipulated, do they serve the victim, or they may serve someone else?
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What is the access to the social system for foreigners and EU citizens?
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How are the foreigners and EU citizens defended in Bulgaria?
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What is the level of transparency when we speak about human trafficking?
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Are there sexual, race or religious prejudices?
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What is the level of a rule of the law?
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Are police and prosecution aim and independent in decision making?
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Are the institutions’ aim when there are cases that could be negative for the national image?
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Is that improving our society?
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How work the police and prosecution in Bulgaria, are they able to cooperate with their international colleagues?
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Are there stigmas on organizations, which are opposed on the status quo?
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Is that just a way to put the problems under the carpet?
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How deeply is NGO sector connected and dependent on the official institutions?
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How flexible is the NGO sector, and how can cooperate?
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How NGO sector function in Bulgaria?
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What is the level of transparency?
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Is the NGO sector able to ask for accountability and transparency to the official institutions?
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What are the instruments for the official institutions to look for accountability and level of the social services?
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Do we have independent institutions?
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Do we have sustainable and independent from government and grants support NGOs?
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What is the level of freedom and independency of NGOs sector in Bulgaria?
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Do we have developed social business models, which are not only sustainable, but have sustainable growth, and invest 100% of the profit back into society?
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The lack of independency allows them to be critical.
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The lack of independency allows them to ask questions that we ask now?
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What is the role of the medias in our society?
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Why when one particular media circle starts coverage of social problem, the others are silent?
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Do we have to take politics into account when the question is regarding a human being?
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Do we have to take politics into account when the questions are regarding the problems in our society?
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Do we have to put politics in human relations?
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What does it mean in the end politics and democracy?
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Are they related only with power or with public serving?
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Is it possible for the goodness to unite us, no matter all interests?
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Could we be selective, moral and ethical?
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What means to be good?
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Culture is function or mechanism of power?
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Could we learn from children innocent?
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Do we want a civilized society?
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What is the role of the free man in a civilized society?
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Do we need heartless bureaucrats and technocrats?
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What is the role of the bureaucrats in a civilized society?
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What does a civilized state mean, possibilities or corruption?
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Do we want a free and developed society?
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Do we see the West only as a source of income, but not as a cultural model?
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Is this income(corruption) is just for the chosen ones?
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What does it mean by corruption?
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What does it mean by a failed state?
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What does it mean banana republic, we and the others?
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Do we have to be tolerant of people who abused power for personal interest?
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Do we have to be tolerant to does corrupt NGOs who took from the most vulnerable?
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What do we want?
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What social relations do we want?
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Do we want to live as the civilized world?
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Do we want to live as humans?