Short Summary
We are an English couple living in South West Bulgaria for the last six years. Many people have stayed with us as volunteers and can vouch for us as I hope reasonable and honest. Bulgaria is struggling to cope with the influx of Syrian refugees, and we started to get involved, first by taking warm clothes to the camps and now by taking in two families, in total 12 people including five young children.
Our food bill has gone from feeding 2 to 14, our electricty bill has doubled, and we need to provide not only warm clothes and shoes for the Bulgarian winter, but after many months on a poor diet of potatoes and rice, they have dental and health problems. In addition there is a lot of costs to do with the paperwork they need to live here and transport costs to and from the camps to get more documents. What was an adequate income for two is being stretched beyond all limits. You may say why have we then taken on so many people, well we went for one family but found another homeless with nowhere for the children to sleep, so brought them too!
We are not posting pictures of the refugees, as they have family still trapped in desparate situations in Syria and they are frightened to have their pictures online. However our story has been reported in the national media and I can send a link to anyone wanting to see videos and news articles about our new giant family, to prove that this is all true.
By the Spring these people will have settled into village life with us, there are jobs waiting for them at a local textile factory and eventually they will be able to rent homes and start something of a normal life. But the next three months are going to be hard, as they learn enough of the language to manage to do that, and until then we are their main means of support. However I suspect that when these people move on a bit, we will be back at the camp taking on the next lot. In one camp alone there are 1000 people, some with newborns, living in tents. An average winter here can get down to minus 20 or more. We aim to house and find jobs for as many people as we can, asking each of the local villages to try and care for one family. But with all this we are not spending time earning money, (given English classes and running an internet bookshop) so our resources are low.
These are people who have lost close family members in the war, children that have seen apartment blocks where their friends lived blown apart in front of their eyes. After the war in Syria is over they want to go back, find their families, rebuild their homes. Right now they need to be warm, fed and have some dignity in their lives. We are trying our best to provide that. If anyone reads this who knows us, Lily and Yan of Krushevo Village Bulgaria, please help if only by passing on this story to others. We need around a 1000 euros to get through the winter, pay for id cards, buy hairdressing tools so one of the women can work, get some basic toys for the children and school books for when they start school, so we can travel with them and talk in churches and mosques, schools and municipality offices and try and get more families out of totally inadequant camps. Every day I am asked if I can help more families, any money that is donated will be well used.